
/ %^- Q> 



TALES 

FROM 

B O C C A CC I O, 

\ 

WITH 

MODERN ILLUSTRATIONS: 

AND 

OTHER POEMS. 



Aoc olv, ay a m/x7, rS ko^ti 
Aqtov fxeooq n kcci tvqictkqv '. 



LONDON: 

R. BENTLEY> NEW BURLINGTON STREET, 

$ut>Us|jer in ©rtrtnarj to $et iJSajestj. 

AIDCCCXLVI. 



\ 



X 






r 5 



DEDICATION. 

A. M. LE COMPTE ALFRED D'ORSAY. 

Monsieur le Compte, 

Avec les benefices d'une position, ii en faut 
accepter les charges. Ce n'est point pour votre plaisir 
seulement que votre reputation Europeenne vous pro- 
clame modele et arbitre du bon gout ; vous vous devez 
aux necessites de vos disciples, au nombre desquels 
j'ose me compter; et vous etes meme tenu de leur 
fournir, dans les limites de votre gouvernement, " aide 
et protection en cas de besoin." C'est la ce que je vous 
demande — dites que j'ai de l'esprit — beaucoup d'esprit — 
chacun en tombera d'accord ; et cela vous coutera si 
peu! puisque vos arrets sont sans appel! 

C'est done avec l'espoir que ma loyaute envers vous, 
et mon admiration sincere pour toutes les brillantes 
qualites qui vous placent si haut, vous feront agreer le 
tribut que je vous offre, et que vous croirez, 

Monsieur le Compte, 

A tout mon devouement, 

L'AUTEUR. 



CONTENTS, 



DEDICATION. 

INTRODUCTION SUPPLEMENTARY, 

INVOCATION TO BOCCACCIO. 

PROLOGUE. 

PREFACE APOLOGETICAL. 

NOTE EXPLANATORY. 

THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 

SALVESTRA. 

NOTES TO THE ABBOT AND SALVESTRA, 



PART If. 



FIORANTE, OR THE BRIDAL EVE. 
ST. DUNSTAN, OR A POPISH LEGEND. 



ERRATA. 



Page 39, Stanza lvi., line 2, for "tale," read "tail" 

„ 40, Stanza lviii., line 2, for 

" Swear that I've spelt my 'vertebo ' quite wrong," 

read 
" Swear that I spelt my Latin words all wrong." 

53, Stanza xin., line 16, read 

" One day she died dead drunk. I'm really serious." 

66, Stanza xxxix., line 14, for " eat," read " ate." 

67, Stanza XL., line I, for "eat," read "ate." 

79, Stanza v,, line 14, for "makes," read "make." 

80, Stanza vn., line 16, read 
" Men rush at maids like moths unto the candle." 

S7, Stanza xx., line 7, for "rise," read "arise." 

89, Stanza xxiv., line 1, read 

"Love, cherish, please, and make much of her, therefore." 

96, Stanza xxxvm., line 5, i 

" He let her go to sermons, plays, and routs, 
"Which is the circle of a woman's bliss." 



INTRODUCTION SUPPLEMENTARY, 

I have been young and now I am old. 

They tell me, moreover, that I am also getting gar- 
rulous, and particularly fond of teaching by fable — 
which, by the bye, I always was ; therefore, that is no 
strange thing. It is to this instinct of my nature, 
indeed, that I trace that fondness for Boccaccio and the 
Italian novellists for which I am become remarkable. 
But they say further that the habit grows with me, 
and that whenever I undertake to discuss a subject, 
the fable is ever certain to come before, and the appli- 
cation to follow after. This is surely in the order of 
nature ; and as it seems to be understood for my 
humour, I may solicit indulgence on the score of age, 
and be permitted the same on this occasion. 



11. INTRODUCTION 

One is not always compelled to be original in a 
fable, anymore than in a story — (some of Boccaccio's 
are borrowed, and all the tales in this little volume 
are confessedly borrowed from him) ; — nor is one 
properly compellable to acknowledge whether the 
fable one tells is at first or second hand — enough that 
it is told, that you know not whence it is derived, and 
that it is applicable to the purpose. A fable etymo- 
logically is only " a word spoken," — and a word 
spoken in season is good, and such a fable is the best 
of all spoken words. 

Once upon a time the Fowls of Heaven took it into 
then wise heads to plant a Grove of Oaks, which the 
Druids might worship in, and thus make sacred. 
Property had not yet put up her pales, but when the 
oaks had grown to their full majesty, and enclosed 
the space which became sacred by acts of devotion, 
the awe which they excited made them respected ; 
and, in course of time, old age and custom made 
them venerable. But, at length, the Druids ceased 
to worship beneath the shadow of their branches ; 
nevertheless, the awe with which they were at first 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 111. 

invested still continued, though that which had in- 
spired it was no more. Fine and noble trees were 
those old oaks, but the breadth of their ramification 
injured contiguous growth ; and, as they had attained 
all the perfection of which they were capable, the 
period was nigh when they would begin to decline in 
vigour, and become unsound in substance. Ere long, 
they would gradually decay on the soil on which they 
had grown, if left to the process of unassisted nature. 
But, happily , the lord of the soil wanted the ' wood 
for naval construction ; and decided, though not 
without much remorse and misgiving, that the vene- 
rable oaks of the Druids required the operation of 
the axe. And thus, before the timber was good for 
nothing, were the oaks, though once sacred, cut 
down ; room thereby being made for the rising under- 
wood to branch out and strengthen in its turn. 

Such are human institutions. Seldom attaining in 
less than a century to their full growth, seldom do 
they retain for much more than a century their 
strength and utility. Nations, it is said, unhappily, 

obey the fate of their institutions, and wither with 

b 



IV. INTRODUCTION 

them, when they prop and plumb and plaster too 
carefully then decaying establishments ; but recover, 
on the contrary, a juvenile and vernal invigoration, 
by the excision of mouldering branches, parasitical 
plants, and crowded scantlings and stifling shade. 
The Druids had ceased to worship within the grove of 
sacred oaks when Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio began 
to utter their parables in rhyme or numerous prose. To 
be sure, there were still mummers who mimicked the 
forms and ceremonies of the old religion, and claimed 
to be the rightful owners of the spot. But these 
men were so immoral, ignorant, and oppressive ; 
became so infamous, both by the precepts they 
uttered and the example that they set up, that there 
was scarcely a child or a public beggar who was not 
cognizant of the cheat, and despised them as wretched 
pretenders and unholy hypocrites. Descendants from 
the veritable and venerable Druids they might have 
been ; but they had long ago abdicated their com- 
missions as the maintainers of the true Druidical cul- 
ture, and were no longer entitled to speak with au- 
thority, or to mediate for the people with the Object 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



of adoration. The salt had lost its savour, and there 
was nothing wherewith it could be salted anew. 

What the children and the Lazzaroni of Italy saw 
plainly, such men as Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio 
could not fail to see still more distinctly. Dante set, 
indeed, a precedent and example for the most vehe- 
ment protestation against the abuses and corruptions 
of the Church of Rome. A new life of thought and 
feeling had, in fact, been for some time in progress. 
This Petrarca most unreservedly expressed, filled to 
overflowing, as he was, with the mighty impulse 
which was then agitating the heart of Christendom ; 
to the impetus of which he likewise contributed by 
adding thereto the tone and voice of love: — thus 
advancing mysticism under the disguise of passion. 
Still true religion remained the property of the poet 
and the mystic, or the sage; it had not yet been 
made the inheritance of the people. This was reserved 
for Boccaccio, to whom was committed the task of 
rendering it more attractive, by investing it with a 
romantic costume. His romance had a burgher and 
civic character—precisely the popular element fitted . 



VI. INTRODUCTION 

to serve and to support the movement in a descending- 
direction, till safely planted in the middle and lower 
ranks of society. It is true that his aim was more 
negative than positive. The exposure of vices among 
the clergy occupied a more prominent position than 
the exhibition of virtues among the laity; — this, how- 
ever, was the law of the time, unavoidable by him, and 
marking a transitional age which should lead to 
another both constitutive and conservative of good. 

This was the first step towards the instruction of 
the middle class; a service of danger both to govern- 
ment and people — the former retaining still the obso- 
lete ignorance which had permitted the evil to happen, 
and the false philosophy which had sanctioned that 
ignorance ; while the latter advanced in merit, 
science, and talent, and refused to proceed in error at 
the bidding of unenlightened power. Education en- 
titles its possessor to a formal interference in public 
affairs, and, when sufficiently spread among the 
people, renders prudent a provision to that end, per- 
haps an elective constitution necessary. Wisdom and 
confidence arc needed to obtain the obedience of the 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



instructed, but ignorance and falsehood having formed 
themselves into a system, the ancient order has had 
ever to be dissolved ere place for a better could be 
found. The defence of the tottering system is for 
awhile reckoned of more importance than the conces- 
sion of progressive reforms ; and to extinguish the 
approaching light, accordingly, no means have been 
considered too atrocious. The massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew appeared only a "good work" to many 
pious and prejudiced minds — for what were the lives 
of fifty thousand persons to the safety of the long- 
established superstition? Thank heaven! however, 
man is so constituted that such crimes induce such 
re- actions as make their repetition impracticable. 
Nevertheless at all times — even in these — there may 
be found infatuated men who, with more zeal than 
discretion, feel as if they could murder all who demand 
a purer creed than that which has of old been sanc- 
tioned by external authority. Dr. Pusey, for instance, 
thought himself justified even so late as the year 1843 
in protesting against the expediency of celebrating 
the great Protestant deliverance on the 5th of Novem- 



VIII. INTR0DUCTI0X 

ber ; and entering into a quasi defence of the whole- 
sale assassination intended. Nor have there been 
wanting others who have uttered from the pulpit the 
same sentiments in a still bolder form — men who 
would confessedly revive all the severities of the 
Holy Office. By such men the Church of the Re- 
formation in England has been now assailed for a 
number of years, during which they endeavoured to 
conceal their Jesuitism and Romanism under a mask ; 
but it having been at length torn from them, they have 
since openly gone over to Rome. For these men the 
late Professor Sewell has, forsooth, in another 5th of 
November Sermon in the present year published an 
apology — " The Plea of Conscience," and " The Pro- 
cess of Conscience," by which they might and have 
arrived at the last stage of apostasy, and seceded to the 
Mother of Harlots. It seems that these " sanctified 
traitors " might have been, and were, justified in 
their secession, by " their weariness with the sins of 
Christ's servants" in the Protestant church, "the 
dreariness of the world and the madness of the people." 
We are next charitably called on "to compare our- 



SUPPLEMENTARY. IX. 

selves with those who are gone — men of zeal, men 
of piety, men of prayer, and watchings, and fastings, 
and almsgiving, and purity of life." No ! we have a 
higher duty than that ! — to compare the church they 
have gone to with the church they have left — to 
contrast the corruption of the one with the purity 
of the other; this is what the controversy demands — ■ 
this is what the honest Protestant would esteem his 
duty. What care we, though the superstitious and 
Jesuitical quit the pale of our glorious national esta- 
blishment ? We are well rid of them. We have 
left, and always had, many nobler sons than they — - 
men who disdain the adoption, whether speculatively 
or practically, of the scandalous assumption that the 
end justifies the means, however unworthy, base, or 
vile — men who have never shown themselves willing, 
for any cause, to shed the* blood or even to calumniate 
the saints — men who have never, like the Tractarians, 
heaped and accumulated, without regard to persons, 
every possible term of abuse, not only on those who 
were against them, but on those who were simply 
not for them— men who were and are above the 



X. INTRODUCTION 

meanness of retaining the Protestant revenues, and 
deriving from them the sinews of a war directed 
against the Protestant establishment ; such men as 
these have always illustrated and still adorn the 
Church of England, which can therefore well afford 
to lose those discontented spirits whose fanatical con- 
duct left us in doubt whether they were knaves or 
madmen, until the issue proved that they had all 
along been fools and traitors — dupes of a corrupt 
superstition, and Iscariots to the puriiied ritual in 
which they had been educated and to which thev had 
vowed allegiance. 

These things being considered, no time could be 
better suited to revive the testimony of a Boccaccio to 
the corruptions of the Church of Rome than the 
present. Though, at my age, I have of course 
learned that " ridicule is not the test of truth," yet I 
have not failed to remember that it is a powerful 
instrument in the detection of falsehood. This also 
Boccaccio knew ; but it seems to me that he preferred 
irony to open ridicule — there is a concealed satire 
in his writings which indicates great power in that 



SUPPLEMENTARY. XI. 

style of composition, if it had been safe to have 
exercised it more openly. The Italian literature of 
the fourteenth century is too clearly a " veiled Isis " — 
we must remove the disguise before we can examine 
the countenance and recognize the features of a 
goddess. This is the source of the mysticism of 
Petrarca and the obscurity of Dante. To throw 
light on their meaning demands accordingly the 
diligence and the talent of a Rossetti.* It was a 
period when (to quote the words of the translator of 
Dante's Lyrical Poems) "■ the jealous eye of the 
Inquisition made it dangerous for philosophy to walk 
abroad without a veil ; " but " it did not escape the 
eye of the philanthropist that he might conceal his 
aspirations after any particular good, whether civil or 
religious, under the symbol of the passion of love ; 
and equally conceal the powerful agency, whether 
individual or collective, through which he might hope 



* See " II Comento Analitico della Divina Commedia," and 
" Lo Spirito Antipapale di Dante," by Signor RossettL 



Xll. INTRODUCTION 

to effect his purpose, under the symbol of the most 
beneficent of the heathen deities." 

In the poems of Dante and Petrarca this love takes 
the ideal and platonic form ; blending, however, with 
the beautiful fable-lore of Greece the theology of 
Christian feeling. Hence love is contemplated by 
them as a spiritual regeneration consequent on a 
death to all that is ignoble, rather than as a direct 
passion for a living object. " Death," to adopt the 
words of Lorenzo di Medici, " which is the end of all 
human things, was the first subject of then poetry ; 
for as Aristotle had observed, deprivation is the com- 
mencement of all created things ; and he who subtilely 
examines the matter will find that the life of love 
proceeds from death, for he who loves dies first to 
every other thing ; and if love contains in itself all 
perfection, it is impossible to arrive at such per- 
fection without first dying, even as to what is most 
perfect." Yes ; they had to die to an institution 
esteemed infallible and most perfect, in order to rise 
to the idea of perfection that yet awaited embodiment 
in a more perfect church. 



SUPPLEMENTARY. X1U. 

Boccaccio deals also with the passion of love ; 
but prefers to exhibit it in the concrete shapes in 
which it actually appears among individuals and 
families in common life ; for his readers were incapable 
of receiving it in its diviner manifestations. Never- 
theless, we should do him injustice if we believed not 
that he was animated with the same spirit. However 
humble the mode in which he exhibits the universal 
passion, he always carefully discriminates between 
the false and the true in its applications. He never 
confounds lust with love; he never panders to the 
former at the expense of the latter—but everywhere 
expressly extols it with a noble enthusiasm — adducing 
the example of its contrary only as its foil, and for 
the exposure of the scandalous lives of religious pro- 
fessors, so that the popular mind might be delivered 
from the bondage of an absurd superstition which he 
plainly saw tended to degrade man below the level of 
the inferior animals. In like manner, in reviving 
these tales of Boccaccio, I have been desirous, before 
I depart hence, of giving my testimony against that 
usurping spirit which, in the Church of Rome, and 



XIV. INTRODUCTION 

in some Romanized minds among us, would postpone 
the conscience of the individual and the exercise of 
private judgment, to considerations of ecclesiastical 
expediency, which, can have no place in the truly 
Protestant mind. In throwing Boccaccio into a 
poetical form I am, I trust, only vindicating his 
claim to rank as he deserves with the two immortal 
names with which his own is always associated ; — a 
subject whereon I should be disposed to say more, 
but for the fear I suffer that my own defects of 
execution may have wronged the excellence in the 
honor of which I have been too ambitious to partake. 

As I began this introduction, even so would I end 
it — in praise of fable. I love the fable, in all its 
forms; the myth, the symbol, and the allegory. It is 
the last that Italian poetry most affects — that in which 
Dante most delights. Our own Spenser derived his 
love of it from his affectionate study of Italian litera- 
ture ; once, too, our painting and sculpture were full 
of it. But our modern times patronize it not ; 
and the general mind prefers a purer method, there 
being no longer the same need now, as of old, for 



SUPPLEMENTARY. XV. 

concealment. The Isis now may be unveiled, and is ; 
and we look upon the beautiful face of Truth without 
fear — without prohibition. Of the other two forms 
the myth is the greatest ; and belongs to the oldest 
bards — the Greek and the Hebrew, and to the race 
at all times. He who realizes the myth has wedded 
the sublime. To such heights I have no present 
ambition ; to approach the beautiful, though afar off — 
only to this I now aspire — happy, too happy, if not 
altogether vainly. 

The following poems may properly be classed, like 
the original stories themselves, under the head sym- 
bolic. Each is a representative portion of man's 
social history, to which each reader probably will give 
a different value, according to his apprehension of the 
whole which is symbolized in the part. Each, there- 
fore, will have his own interpretation. Accordingly, 
let him not repine, for even in this respect, if in no 
other, the reader will be as well off as the hearer of a 
sermon, however eloquent or orthodox. No two 
men see the same rainbow; and it may be proved 
that no two men ever heard the same discourse. It 



XVI. INTRODUCTION 

is an old paradox, but true, that the same numerical 
voice of a preacher is not heard by any two of his 
audience, but that every man, nay, every ear is 
affected with a distinct voice. For a certain configu- 
ration of minute particles is essential to every sound, 
which variously and in a peculiar manner impinge and 
sigillate the sense of hearing ; while the air serves as 
the material of all voices — that subtle part of the air 
which is inspired and modulated in the vocal artery 
and organs of speech — which though small in quan- 
tity as well as pure in quality, is nevertheless sufficient 
upon dispersion to possess a capacious sphere. The 
voice at its first emission is one general configuration 
of the most tenuous particles of the air, which in its 
diffusion is contracted and dispersed into myriads of 
minute vocal configurations or particular voices, some 
of which invade the ears of one person, some of 
others. But though thus the same numerical voice 
is not heard by any two of the same audience, yet in 
a sense all receive the same general voice, even as the 
air efnated may be said to be the same air, though the 
particular voices, dilated to particular ears, are not the 



SUPPLEMENTARY. XVU. 

same numerically — for to conceive any one particular 
voice to be in divers places or subjects at once were 
manifestly absurd. And even so of our stories, con- 
sidered as symbols ; each reader will interpret them 
according to his particular experience of man and 
society, yet will each story have a general signification, 
in which all partial apprehensions shall be conve- 
niently included. And thus as I began this prelection 
with one fable, have I ended it with another, though 
appearing rather in the scientific than the narrative 
form. Herewith I leave each reader to his Private 
Judgment, well knowing that though each man's 
judgment differs, yet each is an indisputable constituent 
of Public Opinion. 



SKETCH 



Htfe antt Writings of (fetofcaimt 33o«aato. 



SKETCH 



%iit antf WLxitiixgfi oi 6iabaum 23oaaccto. 



To the student of medieval literature there can be 
few periods more interesting than that which was 
signalized by the revival of letters in Italy. The 
latter end of the thirteenth and the commencement 
of the fourteenth century was brightened by a galaxy 
of genius, amidst the glories of which stand out, 
in pre-eminent relief, the great names of Dante, Pe- 
trarca, and Boccaccio. The first of these was the 
father of Italian song, as the last named was of 
Italian prose. The pupil of Dante and the friend 
of Petrarca, Boccaccio had every advantage which 
the most favourable fortune could supply, and in 
the rich legacy which he has bequeathed to pos- 
b 



VI LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

terity, we have the proof of the zeal with which 
he cultivated his powers and improved his oppor- 
tunities. The circumstances and even the place of 
his birth have been made the subject of contention. 
A writer in the Dictionnaire Historique* asserts, that 
he was the son of a peasant, but all the best autho- 
rities concur in representing his father as a mer- 
chant of considerable rankf residing at Florence ; his 
name was Boccaccio de Chellino, and his birth-place 
was Certaldo, in the Val d'Elsa, where his father pos- 
sessed an estate. It was at Certaldo that Giovanni 
was born, if we may trust the Latin % epitaph in- 
scribed on his tomb, and which he is reputed to 

* This assertion is made on the authority of no less a per- 
son than Filippo Yillani, a contemporary of Boccaccio, who 
says, '* Hie (Johannes) enim natus est naturali patre Boccaccio, 
industrio viro, natus est inCertaldi oppido." — Baldelli, p. 277. 
t Marmi, lib. i. p. iv. ; Domenico Aretino apud Mequs, 
p. 267. 

X Hac sub mole jacent cineres ac ossa Johanuis 
Mens sedet ante Deum mentis ornata laborum 
Mortalis vita?, Genitor Bocchaccius illi 
Patria Certaldum, Studium fuit alma poi. ; sis. 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. Vll 

have composed himself, but the evidence against the 
fact is so strong, that it casts a doubt upon the 
authenticity of the epitaph, and there are few readers 
who will not rejoice in seeing the authorship of so 
vain-glorious and irreligious a composition removed 
from Boccaccio. We shall find all the most trust- 
worthy chroniclers fixing the date of Giovanni' s birth 
in the year 1313, and the place at Paris. It is 
probable that the elder Boccaccio was now about 
33 years of age, for Filippo Villain calls him young 
at this period, and Giovanni speaks of him as being 
aged in the Fiammetta and in the Ameto, both 
which works were written subsequently to 1343. It 
appears likely from the statements of Mazzuchelli, 
that he was born about a. d. 1280. In the service 
of the Florentine republic he seems to have acquitted 
himself with credit in several stations of honour and 
authority, without however turning his thoughts 
permanently from commerce, in which he both ex- 
celled and delighted, and to which he intended to 
devote his son Giovanni. It was while residing in 



Vlll LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

Paris, for reasons connected with his commercial 
undertakings, that he saw and was struck with the 
beauty of a young French girl, whose name has 
not been preserved ; she eventually became his mis- 
tress, and the fruit of this connection was Giovanni. 
It is to be observed that, save in the epitaph before 
cited, Boccaccio never called Certaldo "his native 
soil" — but "the native soil of his ancestors," * and 
there appears the less reason therefore to discredit 
the account given above. 

The mother of Giovanni died shortly after his 
birth, and though we know not with certainty how 
long the elder Boccaccio remained in Paris, yet it 
is clear that the earliest reminiscences of the great 
Romancer was connected with Florence, and that 
it was in the cradle of the arts that his childhood 
was passed. 

His tutor was Giovanni de Strada,f a man highly 

* " Nat ale solum majorum meorum," — see Baldelli, p. 
277. 

f Manetti, Vita di Boccaccio. 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. IX 

esteemed as an instructor ; but destined as the young 
Boccaccio was for mercantile pursuits, he was hardly 
allowed to go through the usual course of instruction 
before he was removed to a school more adapted to 
confer a commercial education — and from thence again 
he was placed under the care of a merchant with 
whom he visited many foreign countries, and made 
himself master of their peculiarities and productions. 
It is impossible for the attentive reader of the Deca- 
meron not to be struck with the rich and varied 
knowledge of the world which it displays ; and we 
cannot therefore agree with Baldelli and Manetti in 
considering the six years thus spent as so much time 
lost, more especially as he was still quite young when 
he finally renounced commerce and addicted himself 
to literature. From the first proposition of this kind 
of life to the young Giovanni, he expressed his ab- 
horrence of it, and the merchant under whose care 
he was placed, when asked what hopes he enter- 
tained of him, declared him to be a youth of so 
limited a capacity that he must send him back to 



X LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

his father, which was accordingly done. Irritated 
and annoyed at what he considered his son's con- 
tumacy, the old man was yet satisfied that Giovanni 
had talents of a high order, and believing the pur- 
suit of riches to be the only legitimate one, he 
stipulated that if Giovanni were released from the 
trammels of commerce, he should apply himself to 
the then lucrative profession of Canon law. For 
this purpose he studied under the celebrated Ca- 
nonist Dionisio Roberti, and soon discovered that 
Canon law was as odious to him as commerce had 
been. Thus he was occupied for six years more, 
which the writers before cited do not hesitate to 
call six additional years thrown away, but which 
we regard as having exercised an equally wholesome 
effect on his mind, as those which he spent in tra- 
velling and commercial pursuits. He acquired a 
thorough mastery over the Latin language, and he 
strengthened his mental faculties by a highly intel- 
lectual, though to him unattractive study. Nor 
must we leave untouched the high probability that 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. XI 

the illustrious Dante himself advised and encouraged 
the hopeful youth in his early love of letters. For 
although the great Florentine died in the year 1321, 
at which time Giovanni was but eight years old, 
yet even at that age the poetical talents of the child 
had begun to develope themselves, and Baldelli con- 
ceives it by no means unlikely that he was taken 
to Ravenna, and that then the attention of Dante was 
attracted to him, and such instruction given him as 
his tender age permitted him to receive. Petrarca, 
too, in one of his letters to Boccaccio, refers to Dante 
as having been "the first leader* and first light 
of his studies." The theory is too pleasant a one 
to be easily given up, and the warm attachment 
which Giovanni shows for the memory of Dante 
is surely more personal than artistical. 

In tracing the progress of our author from his 
first essays in verse to the full perfection exhibited in 
the Decameron, it will be found that the early 
romantic literature of France had a powerful effect 

* Petr. Ep. Eden. Crisp, lib. XII. ep. VII. 



Xll LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

on his susceptible mind, and so distinctly marked all 
the traces of its action, that many French writers 
have represented him as a mere borrower and 
plagiarist, — among these Le Grand* occupies a pro- 
minent place ; and Baldellif has thought it neces- 
sary in the XlVth and four following chapters of his 
fourth illustration, to enter at large into this question, 
and has succeeded in clearing Boccaccio from the 
charge thus brought against him. Certain it is, 
however, that his writings are tinged with the 
romantic and chivalrous spirit of the Provencal 
" trouveurs-" and that the classic attainments which 
he possessed in so high degree, were all rendered 
subservient to the more modern and romantic cha- 
racter. To a mind thus imbued, Florence was a 
peculiarly fit place for the perfecting of a poetical 
education ; the love of literature, so common there, 
was combined with no small proficiency in it — the arts 

* Legrand, Fabliaux et Contes des XII. et XIII. Siecles. 3 
vols. Paris, 1771. 
f Baldelli, p. 336. 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. Xlll 

were cultivated and understood, and Florence was al- 
ready assuming that rank in the learned world, which, 
for centuries afterwards, she maintained undiminished. 
But with all these advantages, there were drawbacks, 
almost equal to them in the young poet's position at 
Florence; his father, whose temper seems by no means 
to have been improved by age, had twice married — 
first, Margherita di Gian Donata,* and who appears 
to have survived her marriage only four years ; and 
next Bice di Ubaldino di Nepo dei Bosticchi,f by 
whom he had one son, named Jacopo, his only 
legitimate child ; this second marriage seems to 
have rendered his father's house anything but agree- 
able to the young Boccaccio ; he describes it, in- 
deed, in verses, whose satire and spirit are far more 
remarkable than their dutiful and filial character. % 

* Baldelli. Illustrazione seconda, p. 275. 

f Baldelli, p. 276. 

X La non si ride mai se non di rado, 

La Casa oscura e muta et molto trista 

Mi ritiene, e riceve a mal mio grado 

Dove la cruda ed orribile vista 



XIV LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

He resolved no longer to remain in Florence, and 
accordingly, in 1344, he removed to Naples; nor 
did lie leave that city till his father's death, in 1348.* 
But the residence of Boccaccio at Naples had so 
marked an influence on his whole life, that it re- 
quires the closest attention of his biographers. It ap- 
pears that it was about the year 1329,'f and probably 
in the early part of that year, that he began to apply 
himself, as we have already seen, to the study of the 
Canon law ; and it is clear, that in the December 
of 1333, he was established at Naples, and, as the 

Di un vecchio freddo, ruvido ed avaro 

Ogn' ora con affanno piu m'attrista, 

Si che Taver veduto il giorno caro 

E ritornare a cosi fatto ostello, 

Kivolge ben quel dolce in tristo amaro. 

Oh ! quanto si puo dir felice quello 

Che se in liberta tutto possiede 

Oh ! lieto vivere e piu ch'altro belio. — Amet. p. 150. 
* Manni, p. 21. 

f Filippo Villani, Vita Boccac. says 1338 was the year in 
which Giovanni first betook himself to Naples ; but Baldelli 
shows that it must have been five years earlier. — Baldelli, 
p. 371. 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. XV 

same authorities assert, that he spent six years* in 
Canonical studies ; and it would seem that for at least 
one year after his removal to Naples he continued to 
be at least ostensibly engaged in the same pursuit. 
But the gay and voluptuous court of Naples ill 
suited these austere engagements ; and if the young 
Boccaccio allowed them to occupy him at all, they 
soon gave place to lighter and livelier employments. 
That Giovanni, even from his childhood, was ad- 
dicted to literature, is evident ; but now he devoted 
himself entirely to its fascinations, and a visit which 
he made to the tomb of Virgil f in the year of 
his arrival at Naples, has been referred to as the 
occasion of this self-devotion. Robert, who at this 
time occupied the throne, was both accomplished 
himself and a promoter of learning in others ; the 
most eminent scholars of the day were gathered 
together at his court, and a circumstance of unusual 
interest which marked the residence of Boccaccio at 

* Baldelli, p. 7. f Filippo Villain, Vita, p. 27. 



XVI LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

Naples, tended greatly to confirm his previous 
determination to a life of learning. Petrarca,* one of 
the most illustrious men of the day, was destined to 
the honour of the laurel; hut, knowing well the 
resources of his own mind, he refused to accept the 
honour till he had proved himself, hy a public exa- 
mination, worthy to wear it ; and Robert, king of 
Naples, was unanimously chosen as the only worthy 
examiner of so great a scholar. To the court of 
Naples, therefore, Petrarca repaired; and after having 
been twice examined in the presence of all the dis- 
tinguished personages of his era, he was solemnly 
declared by the king worthy of the laurel. At this 
examination the young Boccaccio was present, and 
the effect which it produced upon his mind was 
precisely such as might have been expected — his 
enthusiasm rose to the highest pitch ; and from that 
time forward Petrarca was the model he placed before 
his eyes, and determined that he would study that 

* Gen. Deor. lib. XIV. cap. XXII. 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. XVll 

great man as a preceptor,* and a guide into all the 
powers and wonders of poetry. Nor was this en- 
thusiasm, unmingled as it was with envy, at all 
surprising in the mind of a generous and sanguine 
young man as Boccaccio then was, for Robert himself 
declared that, till he heard Petrarca, he had been 
all his life in the dark about poetry and poets. 
Thus then we have our poet at once given up to a 
life of literary labour, and rejoicing in all the society 
most congenial to one so determined. It does not 
appear that the king of Naples and Sicily had his 
attention attracted to the young Florentine citizen, or 
that Boccaccio ever received from him either notice or 
encouragement ; but if. Robert were thus blind to the 
merits of the stranger, there were members of the 
royal family who had eyes more acute or hearts more 
sensible ; and it is somewhat remarkable that he who 
was destined to form a glorious trio with Dante and 
Petrarca — was destined also like them to hand down 

* Petrarca alludes to this in one of his letters to Boccaccio — 
" Sic me nima tua vexat humilitas." — Sen. lib. 1, Ep. IV. 



XVU1 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

to posterity the object of a poetical passion. The 
Fiammetta of Boccaccio was no other than the princess 
Mary, a natural daughter of king Robert ; and as 
Petrarca met his Laura, so did Boccaccio his Fiam- 
metta, in a church. It was the Saturday before Eas- 
ter in the year 1341, that, being in the church of 
St. Lorenzo di Napoli, his attention was drawn to 
the marvellous beauty of a lady in black or dark 
brown, whose image from that time never was absent 
from his mind. The fourteenth century was not the 
age, nor was Mary the lady to let such a lover sigh 
in vain ; and the writings of our author plainly indi- 
cate that his love for the princess was of a far less 
seraphic kind than that which Dante had felt for his 
Beatrice, or Petrarca for his Laura.* 

* The history of Fiammetta is as obscure as that of Boccac- 
cio himself. Tiraboschi gravely asserts that there never was 
any such person (Tom. V. p. 521) ; but that she was the ima- 
ginary and poetical mistress of the young Giovanni's fancy. 
Baldelli on the other hand maintains, that, though a real 
personage, her relationship to Robert was very problematical, 
and she was probably a legitimate branch of the Aquina or 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. XIX 

Fiammetta, unfortunately for her fame, was mar- 
ried, and had been so for some years, when she 
became the object of Boccaccio's passion — and it is 
partly to this circumstance and partly to her royal 
birth that we are to attribute the studious conceal- 
ment of her name in the writings of her lover. It 
was to her glory, however, that the Filicopo, and the 
Amoroso, Visione, the Teseide, and the Fiammetta were 
written, and in other poems she is set forth as the 
great object of the poet's love. The life of this 
lady is but little known, and the very dates of 
her birth and death are subjects of controversy. 
Sansovino relates that in the year 1380, the year 
in which the Queen Johanna was strangled, Mary 
was decapitated.* This would make her the sur- 
vivor of Boccaccio by five years, and is inconsistent 



Caserta families ; he ironically congratulates Tiraboschi on his 
small knowledge of women. — Illustrazione V. p. 367. The 
account given in the text is supported by Manni, Bertusi, San- 
sovino and Mazzuchelli. 

* Bouche, Hist, de Provence Art. Roi Robert. 



XX LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

therefore with the sonnet, in which the poet mourn- 
ing the death of Petrarca, observes that he (Petrarca) 
was then in the blessed company of Laura and 
Fiammetta,* unless we suppose that the repeated 
notices of her death are all intended as means of 
concealing the true and living object of his love. 
This, however, would indicate a degree of conceal- 
ment in unison with the task neither of the age nor 
of the poet. It is, perhaps, impossible to obtain any 
very exact information on this difficult and intricate 
subject ; it seems plain that Boccaccio believed Mary 
to be the daughter of the king, and probably the 
safest conjecture will be that in so thinking he 
was right. During this residence he wrote, as we have 
seen, the Filicopo and the Teseide, which occupied 
him but a short time in composition, for it was not 

* Or sei cola dove spesso il desio 
Ti tiro gia per vedere Lauretta 
Or sei dove la mia bella Fiammetta 
Siede con lei nel cospetto di Dio 
Tira mi dietro a te, dove giojoso 
Veggia Colei che pria d'amor' m' accesse. — Son. 97. 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. XXI 

until Easter 1341, that he first saw Fiammetta, to 
whom they are both dedicated, and in 1342 we find 
him again a resident in Florence, and an eye-witness 
to the tyranny and rout of the Duke of Athens,* 
who was made Lord of Florence in May 1342, and 
was driven out of that city in July 1343. His stay 
at Florence was but for two years, but those years 
were well employed, for they produced the Ameto, 
and the Amorosa Visione. These works gave many 
and clear indications as to the name and rank of 
his mistress, and this, perhaps, because at a dis- 
tance from her he conceived that she would be less 
compromised, and he more glorified. It was during 
these two years that the second marriage of Boc- 



* Walter de Brienne, duke of Athens, was invited by the 
Priors of Florence to be their leader ; and he was accordingly 
sent by Robert, king of Sicily, to replace Malatesta di Rimini, 
a man of small capacity and still less courage. De Brienne, 
however, found the Florentines by no means easy to govern, 
and after ten months of oppresssion .he was driven out of the 
city, and finally slain at the battle of Poictiers by a Florentine 
attendant of the Prince of Wales. — Bocc. de Illust. Inf. lib. IX. 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 



caccio the elder took place, and as it was in con- 
sequence of that marriage that our author left his 
father's house finally, it may be concluded that 
when in 1342 he returned to Florence, it was with 
a view of taking up his permanent residence there. 
This, however, if intended was not fulfilled, for in. 
1344, Boccaccio again returned to Naples, where he 
continued till the death of his father, which hap- 
pened, as we have seen, in 1348. 

It is probable that on his arrival at Naples he 
began to write his Decameron, and this as much 
for the amusement of the young Queen, Johanna, 
by whom he was well received, as for that of his 
beloved Fiammetta; here too he wrote the Fiam- 
metta, and this appears to have been the first pro- 
duction of his pen after his return. The death of 
his father restored him to Florence, and scarcely 
had he made his appearance among his fellow- 
citizens, when he was advanced to posts of honour 
and emoluments. He was early sent as an ambas- 
sador to Romagna, and though the object and even 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. XXlll 

the exact date of his mission cannot be ascertained, 
yet it could hardly have been later than 1350. In 
the same year he was chosen to carry the bounty 
of the Florentines to the daughter of their greatest 
man, Beatrice, the daughter* of Dante Alighieri. 

It was about this time that he became personally 
acquainted with Petrarca, whom he had long and 
warmly admired ; and the conversation of this great 
man probably induced him to write the life of Dante, 
a work which he undertook more willingly, having 
but just visited the tomb and the daughter of that 
illustrious poet. It must have been a peculiarly 
pleasing task for Boccaccio, to be sent as he was 
in the following year to Padua, to bear to Petrarca 
a reversal of the sentence of banishment which had 
been pronounced against him, and the restitution of 



* Manni gives the following extract from the Archivio del 
orto S. Michele : — " 30 di Decembre 1350, a messer Giovanni 
di Boccaccio fiorini died d'oro, perche li desse a Suora Bea- 
trice fiyliuola che fit di Dante Alighieri monaca nel monas- 
tero di San Stefano dell' Uliva a Ravenna." 



XXIV LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

his father's property, of which he had been unjustly 
deprived ; and although no peculiar diplomatic talents 
were required for such a mission, yet the selection 
of Boccaccio to fill it was a proof of the high esteem 
in which his fellow-citizens held him. After this 
he was sent on various diplomatic missions. Once, 
1352,* to the Marquis of Brandenburg, once to 
Pope Innocent f VI. in 1354, and twice to Pope % 
Urban V., first in 1365, and again in 1367. These 
three last-named employments are of importance 
to be noted, not only because they show the high 
repute of Boccaccio in the republic, but because 
they prove that he could not have been regarded 
with hostility by the heads of the Church. Had 
he been a man whose character had been notoriously 
irreligious, he would never have been deputed by 
the Florentines as their ambassador to Rome — nor 
had he been supposed hostile to the legitimate au. 

* Melius, p. 268. 

f Amm. Istor. p. 563. 

£ Amm. Istor. pp. 651, 663; Manni, p. 49. 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. XXV 

thority of the Church, would the Popes have so 
received him as to secure his return again and again * 
— but on this subject we shall have occasion to en- 
large in another place. Of all these public engage- 
ments, unquestionably that which brought him into 
connection with Petrarca was at once the most pleas- 
ing and the most profitable. Their friendship lasted 
during their joint lives, and on more than one occa- 
sion the advice and assistance of Petrarca was of the 
greatest advantage to Boccaccio. Following the bent 
of his studious inclinations, the latter had greatly 
deranged his affairs, and had nearly dissipated his 
small fortune by his purchases of books and manu- 
scripts. Petrarca generously assisted him in his 
difficulties, furnished him with the sums he required, 
and gave him such prudent advice as to change alto- 
gether the life which hitherto Boccaccio had been 
living. It was in the year 1353 that the Decameron 
was first given to the public, and its success was 

* Manni states that he was sent again to Rome in the fol- 
lowing year. 



XXVI LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

such as to justify all the expectations which had ever 
been entertained of its author ; and two years after- 
wards he wrote the Corbaccio, of which, when we 
come to criticise the works of Boccaccio, we shall 
speak more at length, — suffice it here to say, that 
it was not qualified to add to its author's reputation. 
It is pleasant to consider that by another visit 
to Petrarca,* then resident at Milan, the mind of 
Boccaccio was brought back into a more healthy 
frame. He applied himself with redoubled vigour 
to classical studies, and in the year 1360 he brought 
at his own charges Leontius Pilatus from Thessa- 
lonica, and kept him for three years in his own 
house, in order to acquire a more thorough know- 
ledge of Greek, and to read the works of Homer 
with that distinguished scholar. "We now approach 
a new epoch in the life of our poet, that, viz., which 

* Petrarca says, in a letter dated August 16, 1360 — " Trans- 
eo autem, memor de his tecum, anno altero, dum nos hcec eadem 
urbes et domus haberet, multa disseruisse." — Cod. Moreli. 
Ep. XXXIII. 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. XXV11 

Manni and Baldelli call his conversion. Pietro Pe- 
troni, a hermit living near Senna, when on his death 
bed, charged his companion Giovacchino Ciani to 
go to Florence and to represent to Boccaccio the 
evil consequences of his writings, and to exhort him 
to repent. Ciani undertook the office, and such 
was the effect of his preaching, that Boccaccio had 
almost resolved to renounce his studies, to sell his 
books, and to retire completely from the world. 
From this step he was dissuaded by the advice of 
his faithful friend Petrarca, who, while he did not 
attempt to deny the occasional errors both of the 
Decameron and other writings, pointed out that 
a renunciation of study was no atonement, but rather 
put it out of his power to make one by more moral 
writings. Unfortunately for Italian literature he 
seems from this time to have given himself up to 
Latin composition, of which the chief were the 
"Genealogia Deorum" and the "de Casibus Vi- 
rorum," &c. But the life of this great man was 
now drawing rapidly to a close; in the year 1373 



XXV111 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

he was attacked by a severe illness, from which 
he was slowly recovering, when he was appointed 
to fill the chair recently established for the expla- 
nation of the Divina Commedia of Dante. The 
exertions which this office involved proved too much 
for his diminished strength, and he gradually sunk, 
till on the 20th of December, 1375, he expired at 
Certaldo. He w T as never married, but he left two 
natural children, one a daughter who died in her 
infancy, and one a son who survived him, and fol- 
lowed him to the grave. He was greatly affected 
by the death of Petrarca, which preceded his own 
only by one year, and may indeed be said to have 
hastened it by the shock it gave to his feelings. 

Having now briefly gone through the chief events 
in the life of this distinguished writer, we shall now 
turn to his works, and these may be divided into 
five classes. 

1. His Latin works. 

2. His works in Italian verse. 

3. His novels. 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. XXIX 

4. His Life of Dante, and his Comment on the 
Divina Commedia. 

5. And chiefly — II Decamerone. 

1. His Latin works, though not of much value 
in our days, still possess great merits, if we con- 
sider the time at which they were written : they 
accomplished then all that could be desired, they 
promoted the study of ancient literature, and cir- 
culated information upon a great variety of sub- 
jects, which before the time of Boccaccio it was 
difficult to acquire. His works of this class are 
"Genealogia* Deorum," in 15 books, "De Casibus 
Virorumf ac Fceminarum Illustrium," in 9 books, 
"De Claris Mulieribus," J "De Montium, Sylva- 
rum, || Lacuum, Fluviorum, Stagnarum et Marium 

* The first edition was printed at Venice without date, but 
about 1472, fol. There are two French and one Italian trans- 
lation. 

f The first edition was printed at Paris, 1535. 

X First edition, no place and date, fol. ; second, Ulm, fol. 
1473. 

|| First edition, without place or date ; second, Florence, 8vo. 
1598. 



XXX LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

Nominibus Liber." But in these rather dry books, 
which are the fruit of industry, the writer does 
not show a trace of the genius which is so striking in 
his Italian prose works. It ought also to be men- 
tioned that he imitated Virgil's Eclogues* in Latin 
verse, an attempt which is remarkable only, because 
it is the first that was made in the literature of 
modern times. We now turn our attention to those 
works in which Boccaccio, unshackled by the forms 
of a foreign and dead language, was in a condition 
freely and naturally to develope the great powers 
he possessed. In order to gain a clear view of his 
merits in the several departments of literature in 
which he tried his strength, we shall examine, next 
his poetry, and it will be manifest that he bestowed 

* With those of Virgil, Calpurnius, and others. Florence, 
1504. 8vo. The characters of these Eclogues are all the 
most celebrated personages of the time, and the events alluded 
to are those in which they were really concerned. Boccaccio 
himself furnished a key to it in a letter addressed to his con- 
fessor, P. Martin de Signa, of which Manni, in his History of 
the Decameron, has given an extract. 



GIOVANNI SOCCACCIO. XXXI 

upon it great care and diligence, but he is seldom 
able to make his imagination move within the me- 
trical form, with that ease and elegance which he 
strove to attain. All his poems are of an amorous 
or romantic kind, but they have little intrinsic merit, 
and nothing but the name of Boccaccio saves them 
from falling into utter oblivion. His Teseide, an 
epic poem, in ottava* rima, is a curious produc- 
tion ; it is the first of its kind in Italian literature, 
and is a specimen of that strange mixture of an- 
tique and romantic poetry which we so frequently 
meet with in the poets of the middle ages. The 
Teseide, however, is written in so stiff and awk- 
ward a style, that it found no favour even among 
the poet's own contemporaries. In the 16th cen- 
tury it was retouched by Granucci, who resolved 
it into prose, but the work in its new form had 



* Boccaccio is usually regarded as the inventor of the 
beautiful measure so called ; and this Teseide as the first work 
in which it was employed. The Teseide was first printed at 
Ferrara, fol. 1475. 



XXX11 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

no better success. Of much greater merit is the 
romantic epic entitled "II Filostrato," * which is 
likewise written in ottava rima. The hero of this 
poem is the Trojan prince Troilus, who is ena- 
moured of the lovely Griseide (Chryseis) the daugh- 
ter of the Greek priest Calchas.f Troilus is called 
Filostrato because the poet intended to represent 
him as the champion in the service of Love (which is 
the etymological meaning of the name), but the hero 
is overpowered by the joys and sufferings of Love. 
Some parts of this poem belong to the most beau- 
tiful compositions in verse that Boccaccio ever wrote. 
A third poem of a similar kind is the "Ninfale 
Fiesolano ;" the invention J of the poem is vulgar, 



* First edition, Bologna, 1498. 

f In this the author departs from Homer, who makes her 
the daughter of Chryseis. — II. lib. 1. 

% It is said that in this poem Boccaccio does little more 
than give the particulars of an adventure which actually hap- 
pened at that time at Florence. The first edition is without 
date or place ; but it is supposed to be of Venice, and about 
1476. The second is of the same place, and of the year 1477. 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. XXX111 

and sometimes coarse, though now and then we 
meet in it with passages of exquisite gracefulness, 
but the work never enjoyed any great popularity. 
A fourth poem is entitled "L'Amorosa* Visione;" 
it is a romantic poem with certain didactic ten- 
dencies, and is written in terza rima ; the initial 
letters of the lines form two sonnets and one can- 
zone in praise of his beloved princess Mary; some 
critics, however, do not consider this to be a genuine 
work of Boccaccio. His "Ametof Commedia delle 
Ninfe Florentine" was received with more favour 
by the Italian public. It is a pastoral written partly 
in prose and partly in verse, and full of allusions 
to local occurrences which it is impossible now to 
understand without a commentary : but the descrip- 
tions are excellent for their simplicity, and the whole 
production is extremely interesting on account of 
its being the first production of its kind in modern 

* First edition, Milan, 1520, 4to. 

f First editions simultaneously Rome and Venice, 1478, 
4to. 



XXXIV LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

literature. In addition to these greater works, Boc- 
caccio wrote a considerable number of sonnets and 
canzoni. It is said that after reading the poems 
of his friend Petrarca, he was so dissatisfied witji 
his own, that he threw in the fire all of the same 
kind that he had ever written ; some of his poems 
have nevertheless reached our times, and the Ita- 
lians, whose literature is indebted to Boccaccio for 
so much that is excellent, continue from time to 
time to republish his poetical works.* 

3. The novels of Boccaccio, which we must dis- 
tinguish from the tales contained in the Decame- 
ron, stand to the latter in the same relation as, in 
French literature, the great heroic epics stand to 
the Fabliaux, with this exception, that Boccaccio, 
both in his novels and in his tales, renounced the 
metrical form in order to be able to tell his stories 
with greater ease in a refined and elegant prose, an 
art which at that time had scarcely been cultivated 
at all in modern Europe. In devising the plot of his 
* The best collection is that by Baldelli, Liverno. 8vo. 1802. 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. XXXV 

novels, he appears to have been less concerned about 
his heroes accomplishing great feats and exploits, 
than to make them pass through a series of love 
adventures, and in this respect the spirit which per- 
vades them is the same as that which we find in 
his poems. The first of these novels bears the title 
"II Filocopo,"* in the edition of Venice, 1530, it 
is called Filicolo ; it is a strange mixture of romantic 
adventures and Greek mythology, which according 
to some critics is said to have an allegorical mean- 
ing. It is ill adapted to modern taste, nor well 
calculated to bear modern criticism. The second 
novel is the "Amorosa Fiammetta/'f to which we 
have before alluded; both the invention and exe- 
cution of this work have much more . charm than 
the Filocopo. The manner in which Boccaccio 



* It must be remembered that the Filocopo was a produc- 
tion of the author's early youth. The first edition is without 
place and date, the second Florence, M. 1472 ; it is styled 
Filocopo overo amorosa fatica. 

t First edition, Padova, 1472. 



XXXVI LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

speaks, in this novel of Fiammetta cannot leave 
any doubt upon the mind of the reader, that it was 
his intention, under this fictitious name, to celebrate 
the praise of his beloved princess, Mary. The third 
novel, the Labyrinth of Love, (Laberinto D' Am ore, 
called II Corbaccio,)* has less merit than the two 
former : it is an allegorical vision and full of bitter 
invectives against the female sex, and seems to some 
extent to be an imitation of Juvenal's satire upon 
women. It forms a curious contrast with all the 
other works of Boccaccio in which he so much de- 
lights to exalt the female character. In fact the 
whole tone is so incompatible with all the partialities 
and fancies of the poet, that it may be presumed 
to have been the fruit of private pique, and that 
the author took vengeance on "the individual by 
endeavouring to throw disgrace on the whole sex. 



* The title is II Corbaceio ossia II Laberinto d'Amore. The 
first edition is Florence, 1487, 4to. In spite of its grossness 
it went through a great number of editions, and was twice 
translated into French. 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. XXXV11 

A i Of the Life of Dante it is unnecessary to say more, 
than that its chief value consists in the anecdotes 
which it contains, and in the honest enthusiasm which 
pervades it. As a historical document it cannot be 
much depended upon. The " Commento," which 
only goes as far as the 17th canto of the Inferno, 
is, on the contrary, of the highest value. "Without 
it many parts of the Divina Commedia (as far as 
the Comment goes), would be with difficulty if at 
all understood. This work was not printed till 
1724, when it appeared in the collected works of 
Boccaccio published at Naples, but with the false 
title of Florence. 

C We now come to the Decameron, the master- 
piece of Boccaccio. This work contains a collection 
of one hundred tales, in which the poet paints in 
one gigantic picture men of all classes, characters 
and ages, and occurrences of the most varied kind, 
from the most jovial and amusing to the most mov- 
ing and tragic. This work forms the model of 
all classical Italian prose, and if he had written no 
d 



XXXVlil LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

more than this one work, his name would have been 
equally immortalized. It is so well and so gene- 
rally known, that it is hardly necessary here to enter 
into an analytical examination of it. Various at- 
tempts have been made to ascertain from what 
sources he derived his stories, some of which we 
have already noticed, but it is still a matter of the 
greatest uncertainty ; many of them may be founded 
upon actual occurrences, some (though Baldelli 
thinks otherwise) may have been derived from the 
old French Fabliaux, and others again may have 
been taken from earlier Italian tales ; but this much 
is certain, that there never was a work which exer- 
cised a greater influence upon the language and taste 
of a nation than Boccaccio's Decameron. It is, 
however, at the same time undeniable that in cer- 
tain respects this influence has had an injurious 
effect upon Italian literature, for while the subse- 
quent Italian prose writers endeavoured to imitate 
the clearness, precision, the pleasing simplicity, and 
the rhythmical flow of his prose, they became at 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. XXXIX 

the same time accustomed to that softness of style 
which, however delightful in the works of Boccaccio, 
is not always consistent with the spirit of other 
topics, and this is probably one of the main causes 
why Italian literature has scarcely any works written 
in a manly and vigorous prose. The best printed 
edition of the Decameron is that of Florence, 1527, 
4to.* 

Its popularity among Boccaccio's own countrymen 
may be inferred from the fact, that there exist up- 
wards of one hundred editions of it. The frequent 
attacks upon the abuses of the Church, and the 
faults of her priests, led the Council of Trent to 
forbid the publication of this favourite work of the 
Italians in its original form and completeness. This 
interdict was of course obeyed, and a number of 
editions were published in which those attacks, as 
well as other portions which were thought to be 

* The earliest edition which bears a date is the celebrated 
Valdarfer, Venice, 1471, fol. This is estimated by Biblioma- 
niacs 'at no less a price than £120. 



Xl LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

injurious to morality were left out, and it was not 
till the year 1/18 that genuine and unmutilated 
editions began to be circulated. 

Our space will not permit us to enter into an 
account of the various editions, mostly expurgated 
ones, which have appeared of this great work, we 
shall therefore conclude this sketch by a few critical 
remarks on that production to which alone Boc- 
caccio is indebted for his position in the Temple 
of Fame. 

Nothing can be more erroneous than to regard, 
as some do, the Decameron as a mere collection 
of well told but scandalous adventures, and of attacks 
at once on the friars and on the Church. That the 
venality and immorality of the one, and the cor- 
ruption of the other, are plainly and unhesitatingly 
set forth, is most true— but we have the authority 
of three, if not four, missions to Rome in which 
Boccaccio was employed, to show us that he was not 
considered an enemy to religion. It was not till the 
Council of Trent began to find that the printed 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. xli 

Boccaccio was hostile to the corruptions of Rome, 
that the work was prohibited or expurgated. And 
let us for a few moments consider what are the 
accusations brought against him in a theological 
point of view : they are, that he was a despiser 
of the miracles of saints, and that his story of 
Fra Cipolla derided them. That he was doubt- 
ful as to the title of certain saints to their place 
in the calendar, and that he expressed those doubts 
in Ser Ciappoletto — that he doubted the entire holi- 
ness of monks, and friars, and hermits, and that 
Rustico Eremita set forth some of his opinions on 
that head. Surely, in all these points, there has 
not, since Parker, been an Archbishop of Canterbury 
who did not agree with Boccaccio. As to another 
accusation, viz., that he wrote the much-talked of 
book called " De Tribus Impostoribus," Baldelli 
replies, that there never was such a hook at all, and 
that therefore he did not write it ! So far then as 
theology is concerned, all that can be said about 
Boccaccio is, that he was proleptically a Protestant, 



Xlii LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

and that he agreed with Luther a century and a 
half before Luther appeared. Surely this is no 
ground on which a Protestant can find fault with 
him. It affords another link in the chain which 
connects hirn with his immortal precursor, Dante, 
who scrupled not to represent Popes themselves as 
suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. 

But if the question be changed, and it be the 
morals and not the theology of the Decameron that 
is the point of objection, even then we can see much 
in extenuation of the admitted coarseness which dis- 
figures some parts of the work. Let it be remem- 
bered that the fourteenth century was in externals 
widely different from our own ; refinement in speech 
was almost unknown — strong facts were rarely 
hidden under delicate modes of expression, and the 
most highly bred and truly virtuous woman used 
then, in her innocence, phrases which would now be 
thought incorrect even by the most abandoned. 
Under such circumstances, the effects of such ex- 
pressions are no longer evil. Chaucer spoke as we 



GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. xlili 

should not speak now ; but will any one say that 
Old Geoffrey was more depraved than the poets of 
our era? Is there a more virtuous writer than 
Shakespeare ? and yet can all that Shakespeare has 
written be read in families ? For the phraseology 
of Boccaccio, we must blame the homeliness of his 
times, and the newness of his language, rather than 
the viciousness of his mind. 

Then again, as to the choice of his subjects. If 
he had any object in view beyond mere amusement, 
and the high tone of many of his more serious tales 
justify us in believing that he had, how was that 
object to be gained save by holding up the mirror to 
nature, and showing the faults she had to correct? 
It was not the fault of Boccaccio if that reflection 
were sometimes revolting. Nay, had he not exhi- 
bited it as it was, he might have left his work as well 
undone. Juvenal is allowed to have been a benefactor 
to his age, by his unsparing and unscrupulous expo- 
sure of its hideous deformities. Why should Boc- 
caccio be condemned because the romantic spirit 



xliv LIFE AND WRITINGS OF, &C. 

which distinguished the literature of the age had 
reached him, and because he chose a different me- 
dium in which to exhibit his remedies ? 

But we are not arguing for victory. We fully 
admit there are tales in the Decameron which ought 
never to have been written, and which we, at least, 
could never translate. But we are not therefore 
blind to the merits of the remainder, nor can we 
avoid feeling that the reputation of a great man must 
depend upon his works taken as a whole — no cap- 
tious criticism — no mere conventional moralist has 
aught to do with the glory of the mighty dead. 
Posterity has entwined the name of Boccaccio with 
the names of Dante and Petrarca, and no power will 
be able to drag him from the pedestal of Fame on 
wiiich Time has placed him. 



THE 



ABBOT OF FLORENCE: 



M Cale at Mmszzw* 



THE SPIRIT OF BOCCACIO, 

Pardon, great soul, that I have dared to speak 
In Northen tongue thy golden song again : 

Oh ! for the accent of some glorious Greek, 
Who sung his music to the sounding main, 
O'er which the critic Xerxes threw his chain ; — ■ 

As is the tale in Ancient Story found, 

So deathless Mind, look down with thy disdain 

On all who deem thy impulses unsound, 

And strive to fetter Thought, which never can be 
bound 1 



THE PROLOGUE. 

Long years have rolled — long, bitter, tearful years, 

Since first I threw my verses on the wave, 
With all a youthful author's hopes and fears, 

And dreading censure, as a trembling slave, 
Who sees his tyrant hastening with the scourge : — 
But that has passed away: — the rushing surge 
Of popular applause, and loud acclaim, 
Which hails a poet, when he conquers Fame, 
I never knew : — but still to me was given 

Deep consolation : — haply sweeter joys : 
Calmer rewards, with more in them of Heaven 

Than those who live upon the million's noise ; — 
The restless conquerors of the realms of thought, 
Who count their glories by the battles fought, 



Not by the years enjoyed ! — by war — not rest !— 
Oh ! for some hermit's cell, some quiet nest — ■ 
Hid far away in some sequestered wood, 
Where I alone the sunny day might brood, 
And as the twilight crept o'er earth and sea, 
To sit alone beneath some lofty tree, 
Waiting that moment, when the Angel Death 
Would close my failing eyes, and take my troubled 
breath ! 



PREFACE APOLOGETICAL. 

Having, on my last appearance before the public, 
declared my intention to retire from the literary 
arena, some explanation may be required in order to 
render my present venture intelligible. Yet the gar- 
rulity of an old man may be pardoned, and probably 
endured, when I say that now it is for the last time. 
The history of the following tales, though simple, is 
not altogether destitute of interest : — some months 
ago, during my residence in Italy, the music of the 
Adriatic, to which I had so often listened in my 
younger days (alas! more than 30 years ago !) brought 
back to my mind those seasons when wandering with 
Byron, we had those mighty talks, to recall which 
constitute the chief " pleasures of memory" to an 
old man. This music came on my soul like a tide 
suddenly rushing into a river bed long dry and 



drained, and on whose parched up sands the wreck 
of the past lay mouldering in decay. The fragment 
of song thus rescued, I throw again upon the great 
ocean of the public, to sink or swim, as shall please 
it best. 



NOTE EXPLANATORY. 



The Author, being a Protestant, is also anxious in the 
present tale to show the demoralizing tendency of Popery, the 
full effect of which he had not the least conception, till a 
residence at Rome opened his eyes to all the deformity of that 
dreadful scourge. He therefore claims, on this view, the full 
merit of its being essentially a religious poem. 



THE 



ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 



Canto £ 



THE 

ABBOT OF FLORENCE: 

1 ®kU from 3Snccact0, 
CANTO I. 



It was a mossy Abbey, hid away 

In the deep bosom of a pleasant wood, 

In which the oily monks were wont to stray, 
As led by idle, philosophic mood ; 

Their favourite hour was at the close of day : 
For then the musing fancy loves to brood, 

To lift us from this low world to the upper :- 

And then it gives such appetite for supper ! 



12 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO I. 



And sometimes I have heard a spiteful hint, 
That pious ladies loved the twilight too ; 

But scandal gives to every thing a tint, 
And colours all that saintly people do : — 

Such tattlers have a kind of jaundiced squint, 
As men who look through spectacles of blue, 

Which make the very fairest of complexions 

Open to what the critics call objections ! 



The pious Abbot of this sacred place 
Was very holy, as such men should be ; 

Save only when he saw a pretty face, 
He felt as feel sometimes the laity ; 

And tho' he vehemently prayed for grace 
To curb his natural impropriety, 

He could not (tho' he prayed in ghostly fashion) 

Get altogether rid of all this passion ! 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 13 



This gnawed our worthy Abbot to the bone, 

Well knowing it would bring down heaps of scandal, 

If his peculiarity were known, 

So as to give the godless ones a handle ; 

And withered spinsters too would sigh and groan, 
Swearing the holy offices were manned ill : : — 

He, therefore, feeling for his church's glory, 

Was sly in all his dealings amatory. 



And thus the vulgar thought him quite angelic, 
And deemed him less of Tellus than of Heaven, 

Hoping to get a toe some day as relic, 

And all their sins " in toto" then forgiven ; — 

If I had Percy Chapel, I could well lick 

The fools, who by such priestly lies are driven : 

As for the Pope, tho' apostolic Vicar, 

I've heard his Holiness is given to liquor ! 



14 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO 



I've therefore shipped off, by an A 1 vessel, 
A pipe of port, two puncheons of old rum, 

(By way of drop to whet his sacred whistle !) 
A cask of brandy — but we must be "mum," 

And sympathize with flesh, and blood, and gristle ! 
They say he'll drink himself to " Kingdom Come,' 

When my small present comes across his gullet ; 

Meantime he takes Schiedam with his red mullet. 



One morning he was walking with a Bishop, 
And felt, as often in the pulpit, dry ; 

He, therefore, naturally sought to fish up 
Some reason for potations deep and sly, 

And his companion, who had skill to dish up 
Good arguments to indulge his fantasy, 

Gave such advice, that lo ! the Pope of Rome 

Got drunk, and in that state was carried home ! 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 



Next day the Vatican's gruff Abernethy 

Called in to feel his pulse, and see his tongue. 

Declared that he would be shipped off to Lethe, 
If he were not more careful, before long, 

Adding, moreover, that he ought to flee the 

Charms of old Bacchus, pleasant — but so wrong ! 

And finished (while his voice to whisper sunk,) 

" For heaven's sake, Pontiff, don't get quite so drunk ! 



Dear Protestants ! you see my Muse grows riotous ! 

And longs to bully Prelate, Pope, and Priest, 
When, lo ! some Benedictine Monk says, "Why at us 

Cut so severely ? — look at home at least. 
But do not, if you're prudent — try at us ! 

(Who are of human dough the working yeast), 
But while I own my Creed is grub and gammon !— «■» 
Religion, as reformed by you is — Mammon ! " 



16 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [cANT 



Our pious Abbot had a wealthy neighbour, 
A Franklin called Ferando, old and dull : 

His wit was like the bluntness of a sabre, 
Which had been sharpened on a critic's skull. 

The very " ne plus ultra" of all labour ! — 
In short, this Franklin was a human bull ! 

Therefore the Abbot, who was curst with corns, 

Thought he would bless this human bull with horns. 



But I anticipate ! — it came to pass, 

Ferando got acquainted with the Abbot : 

For like ail fools Ferando went to Mass ! 
And as all fools deserve — let all fools nab it. 

A Papist — or a Puseyite's an ass ! 

And I, whate'er the consequence, must blab it j 

Like Balaam's donkey, poets sometimes say 

The truth, while blockheads treat it as a bray ! 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 



Ferando had a wife of wondrous beauty ! 

Who went to our good Abbot for confession ! 
Which is of course a pious woman's duty : — 

• Alas ! that it should lead them to transgression ! 
The saintly man looked on her as a booty, 

And having killed old sins, begat a fresh one ! 
So sparing nine-tenths of the Decalogue, 
Over the seventh he grunted like a hog ! 



At last his passion swallowed every thought, 
He had, in fact, no other meditation ; 

The day and night the self same vision brought. 
As overseers deal out the changeless ration ! 

Or as a bee in luscious honey caught, 

Dies overwhelmed by thorough saturation I 

So our good Abbot felt another's wife 

Become the joy and torment of his life. 



THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO I. 



Fair Gertrude's dress was quite in modern fashion, 
That is to say, she wore it very low, 

Which awfully stirred up the Abbot's passion ! 
'Tis wrong that ladies dress or undress so ! 

But I myself have seen some maidens rash on 
That point, and really made my cheeks to glow ! 

For showing all their charms so very nude, 

Is half an invitation to be rude. 



Ferando, though one of the simplest fellows 
In many other things, was wise in this, 

He had an inclination to be jealous ! ■•• 
And did not like to share his lawful kiss. 

There are few men who have the face to tell us 
. They can endure the human gander's hiss I 

I beg the bird to pardon me— 1*11 think, 

Next time, before I dip my pen in ink, 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 19 



I must refrain entirely from comparisons : — 
They sometimes bring a hornet's nest about us, 

For if we make -them tame as Yankee garrisons, 
The critics are the very first to flout us : — 

And yet without, our poetry's like Harrison's 
Chronometers, that we can bear about us, 

Sleek Fusbos,of that Sunday print— "The Examiner," 

Can't understand your muse.: so takes to damning her. 



" Hereditary critics, know ye not, 

"Who would be free," of your exalted sty, 

Must first themselves the milky paper blot, 
And write a book which nobody will buy ? — 

Then forth ye rush out critics, and red hot 
Snarl, bark, and bite at ail the passers by ; — 

Some timid bards may buy up your " palaver," 

But I would rather have your bite, than slaver S 



20 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO I. 



When I was young I wrote some furious papers, 
• Slaughtering the poets, future, past, and present, — ■ 
In short, I cut most critical of capers, 

And wrote what must at least be called unpleasant, 
But poets, dull dogs, give us all the vapours ! 

Especially if the hard's a self-taught peasant; 
Than which, I don't think, Mother Nature can 
Make a worse bore — except a learned man ! 



Now this is most magnanimous of me, 
For I am intimate with tongues eleven, 

And am on speaking terms with twenty-three ; 
Indeed there's scarce a language under Heaven 

In which I don't write first-rate poetry, 

Except in English : — this great gift was given 

With my first teeth, for my dear mother says 

My sucking verses were like Taifourd's plays. 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 21 



At four years I began to poetise, 

And spoke Pindaric odes on " odds or evens :" 
When I was seven I wrote two comedies, 

So full of fun all thought them writ by Stephens ; 
Jones likened them to Powell's Tragedies, 

Which are made up of Home's and Browning's 
leavings ; 
For he, I'm told, asks dramatists to tea, 
And sucks their plots as they suck his Bohea ! 

XXI. 

He once implored me on his bended knees 

To carefully correct some silly play : 
Now I'm a Christian poet given to please, 

And like to be obliging in my way, — 
I therefore tried to make his chalk to cheese, 

And churned upon it a whole summer's day; 
But wrote, indignant, as I sent the drama, 
" You have missed poetry but murdered grammar." 



22 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO I. 



Then I clashed off an epic ; this I gave 
To Heraud, which he printed as his own ; 

A publisher (the poets' willing slave) 

Gave him four thousand guineas for it down ! 

Till rivals, one at least began to rave, 

(He's now the mad " Barabbas " of the town !) 

For the great epic sold at such a rate, 

That the four thousand guineas brought in eight. 



Epics are somewhat at a discount now, 

The last was knocked down at a farthing ; yet 

Eight large editions crown the starry brow 
Of bald Orion, — no mean coronet S 

But after all the price was very low, 
And to my dying day I shan't forget 

When epics " four a penny" at the shops 

Brought down the price of taws and lollypops. 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 23 

XXIV. 

I'd build a little gaol for all these men 

Who flood us with such deluges of rhyme ; 

For the more hardened ones I'd have a den 
Dug deep and filled with critics' filthy slime. 

There should they live like hedgehogs in a fen ; 
For now their verse becomes a serious crime, 

And wants judicious discipline and physic, 

I give them up to Doctor Bell of Chiswick ! 



His plan of treatment I think rather cruel, — 
He first debars them all from pen and ink, 

Then doses them with Rogers' water-gruel ; 
After this discipline they cease to think 

Of verse, but take to Brougham and Locke and 
Whewell, 
Until the " rolling eye " can scarcely wink ; 

He then considers the tamed maniacs fit 

To be the lords of their recovered (?) wit I 



24 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO I. 



Last year I called upon the Duke, at Walmer, — 
Who, as he always does, received me well ; 

" I mean no pun," — no welcome could be warmer, 
Not even in a Calvinistic hell : 

He made me dine with him, and to my dormi- 
Tory (tired Nature's sweetest citadel) 

Was led with smiling looks and bed-room candle, 

By a fair girl Stop, cries the Muse, no scandal. 



Unhand me, Muse — I'll tell the truth, I swear ; 

Unhand me, or I'll make a ghost of you : — 
Well — I was led by chambermaid as fair 

As ever owned two eyes of starry blue, 
A full-fleshed figure, with luxuriant hair, 

Which o'er her neck in careless grace she threw ; 
She led the way — I followed as she led, 
And then she turned down with much grace the bed ! 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 25 

XXVIII. 

I, lost in calm abstraction's loftiest mood, 
And being of a nervous, gentle nature, 

Locked the room door, — when lo ! before me stood, 
In beauty's winning light, that handsome creature.; 

I saw her face and thoughts were pure and good ! — 
And blest the innocence of every feature ! 

Letting her out a vestal as she came — 

My female readers cry out, " What a shame !" 



The wife and Bennet (so the monk was called) 
Would often in the Abbey's garden stray : 

This pleasant garden was full lofty walled, 
And spreading trees were growing every way ; 

While jessamines and honeysuckles crawled 
O'er buttresses fast creeping to decay : — 

And here and there, above one's drowsy head, 

A mighty vine its leafy shadow spread. 



26 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO I. 



By Heavens ! it must be a pleasant thing 
To live and die within a garden land, — 

To see the bursting herbage in the spring, 
And watch as day by day the buds expand ! 

To hear the sweet birds in the morning sing, 

Those songs which the pure heart can understand ! 

To sit at noon beneath the leafy tree, 

Whose rustling makes a music like the sea. 



And then to watch the twilight shadows creep 
Over the mighty heavens, like a thought 

Glooming the mind ; to know the world asleep 
And nature to the breast of midnight caught S 

To feel the silence passionately deep, 

'Till every sense is to its climax wrought ! — 

For one sweet year of life like this, I'd give 

In glad exchange the years I have to live. 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 27 



Here often in the Abbey garden sat 

The Abbot, Gertrude, and her jealous spouse, 
Spending the hours in theologic chat, 

Beneath the cooling shadow of the boughs ; 
Such furious love her charms at last begat 

In Bennet, that it quite disturbed his vows, 
And vexed him so, he took no pleasure in 
His meals and masses, but was growing thin ! 



One day she mourned at the Confessional 
Her husband's jealousy, which grew absurd, 

And said, that were her life transgression all, 
She could not more suspicion have incurred ; 

The holy man, with twang professional, 

Replied, when he this woeful case had heard, 

" That, of a truth, it was a great omission 

On her part, not to justify suspicion." 



28 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO I. 



He then discoursed of spiritual pleasures, 
And talked a little quiet " double entendre," 

Declaring Love the sweetest of all treasures, 
More precious than the diamonds of Golconda : 

And ever kept up his besieging measures, 
And getting every passing moment fonder, 

Until at length he cast his eyes above, 

And very coolly said, "That Heaven was Love." 



The buxom Gertrude, old Ferando's wife, 
Mistook the meaning of the Abbot's lecture, 

And said, that midst her matrimonial strife, 

She scarce could get of Heaven the least conjecture; 

No, she would rather lead a widow's life ; 

Would rather that the fleshly passions pecked her ; 

Would rather be the inside of the bellows. 

Than live with one so past all reason jealous. 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 29 



" Therefore, good father, give me your advice 
How I may cure my spouse, this sottish swine, 

Of jealousy — that inconvenient vice ; 

It leads away my soul from thoughts divine, 

So that I quite despair of Paradise. 

Whereas I'm sure, if wedded peace were mine, 

I should all wives in piety eclipse, 

And nought save Watts' hymns should pass my lips.' 



" I make no question (said the monk), dear madam, 
That such a husband renders life unpleasant, 

And poisons holy thoughts ! — Indeed I sad am, 
Whene'er I think that such a stupid peasant 

Should have so fair a woman ; but most glad am, 
When I consider 'tis but for the present ; 

For I will undertake to cure Ferando, 

And do for you what none else living can do ! 



30 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO I. 



" For in my youth I studied pharmacy, 

With other things my grave pursuits to vary, 

And for your gentle sake no harm I see 
In acting for the once apothecary 

Without a licence ; I'd not harm a flea, — 
Much less a man, however arbitrary : 

Therefore if you will swear to keep it close, 

I'll swear to cure your husband with one dose." 



" Good father," said the lady, "never doubt 
That tho' a woman I can hold my tongue ; 

I'll undertake the secret shan't come out, 
If needs be, in my mouth I'll cram a bung, 

So that my nimble tongue can't wag about ; 
In future times by poets shall be sung 

This somewhat more than miracle complete ; — 

That I, tho' woman, was for once discreet !" 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 31 



" I doubt you not (said he) ; I'm quite content, 
And therefore tell you, — that the only cure 

Is Purgatory, where he must be sent, 
Its purifying process to endure !" 

" Good Heaven !" — said she, in blank astonishment, 
" My husband is not dead — nor sick I'm sure ! " 

" Nay, he must die — (the Abbot slily said), 

He never can be cured 'till he is dead." 



" What ! kill Ferando ? Oh, you wicked monk !" 
" Listen, dear daughter, to my plan, (said he,) 

For when my wondrous potion he has drunk, 
He will appear as dead as dead can be ; 

And his poor soul in Purgatory sunk — 
Where we will cure him of his jealousy ; — 

After a time, we'll bring him back to life, 

Cured of his sins, and doting on his wife." 



32 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO I. 



Do what you will, (the injured wife replied.) 
So that you cure him of his cruel doubts 

Of my great virtues, more to Heaven allied, 
Than unto woman, who is full of pouts, 

Hysterieks, ogling, coqueting and pride, 
Never contented, save at balls and routs ; 

For stead of darning holes in husbands' breeches, 

Wives now make thund'ring holes in their lords' riches. 



When spinsters they are more angelical 

Than are. the seraphs, could we but be peepers, 

For then they strive their charms to sell : I call 
This natural in a nation of shopkeepers ! 

(Once on a time I let a jelly fall 

Beneath the languid glance of azure sleepers) : 

But when they're married, they shut up their shop, 

And let their stock of spinster virtues drop ! 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 33 



But I digress — all first-rate poets do : — 
The stupid dolt (who never had a notion 

Beyond the fact — that one and one make two !) 
Swears we are vague ! (Ye drops to our great 
ocean !) 

The only soul ye have hangs to your shoe ! — 

How is't that sense and wisdom ye should so shun ? 

From wholesome clay has patient merit sprung, 

But arrogant dulness comes from filthy dung ! 

XLV. 

Now felt the Abbot on the step of bliss ! 

And half enjoyed her in his amorous thought ; 
His lips anticipate the mad'ning kiss, 

And to his breast her panting form is caught ; 
His spirit treads upon the mad abyss 

Of pleasure, by the soul's damnation bought ; — 
Bosom to bosom : fiery lip to lip ; — 
Thus Hell and Heaven at one fountain sip ! 

D 



34 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO 1. 



Then fear leaps up and dashes i\ away ! — 

Ah ! fleeting vision ! Ah ! heart-robbing brain 

Night ever stealing on the steps of day, 

And pleasure courting the embrace of pain ! 

Wisdom, that leads the human soul astray, 
That it may find the path of peace again ; 

How is it that if we the truth may speak, 

The world is ever playing at hide and seek ? 



Evil and good ; they cannot both be winning ; 

Perhaps the truth is good and evil go 
To make out one great average of sinning 

Calming great rapture with a touch of woe ! 
Else doubtless all the human race were grinning 

With joy too high, or sadness all too low : 
Thus pain and pleasure, human groan and laugh 
Make up a very pleasant half-and-half. 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 35 



" Father ! (said Gertrude) — I thought you a saint ! 

I never dreamed you could feel so naughty; 
Upon my word I'm half inclined to faint, 

To think that one so very far past forty 
Should talk to ladies in a way so quaint. 

How is it that you can't let sense or law tie 
Your passions down to a seraphic level ? — 
You're else in drink, or influenced by the Devil. " 



" Be not amazed, (the Abbot quoth,) fair dame, 
That I have passions, like a human creature ; 

Call me not old, nor of an ugly frame, 
But rather of a free and comely feature : 

Methinks, my daughter, you'll be much to blame, 
If you decline to let me have the key to your 

Affections, for whatever I may do, 

I can but have your future good in view. 



36 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO I. 



So while my friend Feraudo's being cured 

In Purgatory of his jealous folly, 
And your eternal happiness secured, 

I'll comfort you, or share your melancholy ; 
Deeming for your sweet sake all pain endured 

With perfect joy, and resignation wholly. 
No one shall know our love : so don't be cruel : — 
Allow me to present you with this jewel !" 



At this he slipped a ring upon her hand, 

Of finest gold with glittering diamond graced ; 

This is a language women understand, 
And I confess that I admire their taste ; 

" Nay : pause no more : the holiest in the land 
Would yield, were they in such position placed : 

You know 1 am a priest of too much virtue 

To do a thing that could in conscience hurt you." 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 37 



The lady cast her eyes upon the floor, 
And seemed uncertain rather and uneasy : 

But loving costly jewels somewhat more 

Than Virtue, which ofttimes is made to teaze ye, 

She thought as many a dame has thought before, 
(Not knowing that the path to sin is greasy !) 

That she'd defeat the Abbot's plan, yet gain 

His jewels to reward her for her pain ! 



She told him, — she'd take time, that she'd consider : 
At all events, he need not pine to Hades ! 

And then she thought how she should look as widow, 
For weeds are an announcement from the ladies, 

(( The wearer is for sale : the highest bidder 
To be the buyer, when the duty paid is ! " 

An old divine once said — (and not in fun he), 

"That matrimony is a matter of money." 



38 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO I. 



And swore moreover that the " Surrogate" 

Was Greek for "Sorrowgate ;" that woman meant 

" Man's woe " — and was for fools the natural state ; 
They go to wedlock's mousetrap quite content ; 

For my own part, I've grown a profligate 

Since my seventh wife to Kingdom Come I sent : 

I'm deeply grieved o'er solemn jokes to daudle, 

I fear I've caught the trick from Douglas Caudle. 



Here an impatient reader cries, " Move on/' 
As the police assail the apple dames, 

Bidding them take their baskets and begone, — 
Not to the Devil — but a worse, — Sir James ! — 

Of every houseless wretch the hope forlorn ! 
No matter — on his soul Old Nick has claims ; 

And as he hates the poor too much to slay 'em, 

He turns them over to his tender Graham I 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 39 



Move on — I will. So therefore wags my tale, 
As once the tale wagged of that famous lion, 

(I'm half afraid the anecdote is stale !) 

Which decorates the Percy's house, called Sion ! 

A man, who'd taken just enough of ale, 
To make a hard bed soft enough to lie on, 

Declared with voice, as loud as thirty bray, 

He saw the lion wag its vertebra ! 



Whereon two thirds o' the people swore the same, 
While t'other third declared the tail was stone, 

And therefore had no legal right to claim 
The privilege of waggish flesh and bone; 

Proving, moreover, that such tails were tame, 
Perhaps the very tamest ever known ; 

At last they found, when just about to fall 

To blows, the lion had no tail at all. 



40 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO I. 



Methinks I hear some ugly son of grammar 

Swear that I've spelt my "vertebra" quite wrong ! 

What I — the father of the living drama, 
And the grandfather of all modern song, 

To be the slave of Alpha, Beta, Gamma ! 
That's really coming it a little strong ! 

The only part of grammar where I shine, 

Is knowledge of the gender feminine ! 



Talking of tails, a rather clever book 

Has reached its fourth edition, so I bought one ! 
If all my readers this precaution took, 

How few would get a volume, tho' they sought one ! 
My publisher would represent a hook, 

Who till this work appeared had never caught one ! 
That Ainsworth sells, and also Bob Montgomery, 
Says nought for taste, tho' very much for flummery. 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 41 



But to return to this said book so shocking ; 

'Tis called the "Vestiges of old Creation :" 
The sire a shoe ; the mother a blue stocking ; 

(A very leg-al mode of generation !) 
Some critics say, it is the Bible mocking ; 

Some, that it treats it with vast veneration ! 
It swears man's an improvement on the ape ! 
Others that we disgrace the monkey's shape ! 



I'll now return and ne'er digress again, 

Just as a sinner swears, when ill from sinning, 

And being for the time in frightful pain, 
Resolves a virtuous life at last beginning, 

But growing well to-morrow, can't refrain 
From folly's path, tho' wisdom ever dinning 

The dull old lessons on his ears, provokes youth 

To stuff his fingers there — and so he chokes truth ! 



42 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO I. 



We left the lady with the Abbot's ring 
Upon her finger, leaving him in doubt 

Whether he had not done a foolish thing ; 
In thus investing property without 

Security ; next time he thought he'd fling 
His jewels to regale a fish's snout ; 

In Stepney Church, upon a marble slab, 

You'll read this wondrous story of a crab ! 



The lady and the Abbot soon agreed — 

That old Ferando should be straightway sent 

Where he would all their pious masses need, 
To get his spirit out of punishment : 

The Abbot swore it was a holy deed, 

And that her conscience never would repent ! 

But added, if it came to that conclusion, 

He'd ease her with a little absolution! 



CANTO I.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 43 



Then on her queenly brow he stampt a kiss ; 

Which sent the blood through all his body rushing: 
The lady took it as a pious bliss, 

Else she had overcome her virtuous blushing : 
But I repeat, a mystery like this 

Is not for unlearn' d folk like me to push in ; 
For if not in the rubric, still 'tis charming 
When parsons kiss the girls, and no great harm in. 



I crave the pardon of my gentle readers 

That I have soiled my page with angry words. 

But shadows come on all : — the lofty cedars, 

Whose spreading branches house the tuneful birds, 

Harbour the spiders, solitary breeders ; 

They, like great poets, hate the common herds, 

And spin their flimsy lines to catch a fly, — 

I'm tired of spinning verses none will buy. 

END OF CANTO I. 



ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 



Canto HE. 



ABBOT OF FLORENCE, 



& Ealt of Boccaccio. 



CANTO II. 



Ferando to the Abbey went next day, 
And after walking in the shady garden 

With the old Abbot, who had much to say 
On bulls, indulgences, and papal pardon, 

Felt somewhat thirsty with the summer's ray, 

And knowing that his friend would not be hard on 

A little drinking, asked the saintly vicar 

To let him have a cooling drop of liquor. 



48 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO II. 



The crafty priest called for a mighty jug, 
And under the green shadow of the trees, 

They sat around the rustic table snug, 

Chatting and drinking at their fullest ease : 

The Abbot slyly put a potent drug 
Into Ferando's cup, who nothing sees 

Save his good friend, the Abbot, and a monk 

Or two ; — in short they all were getting drunk. 



This powder was of very wondrous quality, 
And worked so on the vitals, heart, and brain, 

That when he drank it, poor Ferando's jollity 

Went from him, like the cork flies from Champagne; 

In short, this sot had let his folly tie 

A knot, which he might ne'er unloose again ! 

For of a sudden from his seat he slid, 

As dead and dismal as a coffin lid ; — 



CANTO II.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 51 



Now to the dead : — within a hollow vault, 
The Abbot laid the body of his friend ; 

'Tis said, the virtuous are the saving salt 

Of the whole earth, which else would rankly end : 

I meant to sing (but ah, my Muse will halt 
When I begin Parnassus to ascend), 

That when a godly man returns to earth, 

" A mortal dies to give an angel birth !" 



The widowed Gertrude to her home returned, 
And on her solitary couch reclined ; 

I will not swear her gentle spirit mourned 
The sudden death of husband dull and blind, 

But there's a sort of idiot feeling learned, 
From herding with the basest of our kind, 

Which makes a wife sigh like a pair of bellows, 

For a dead spouse, altho' the worst of fellows. 



52 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO II. 



For my own part (as I'm alive and married) 
I boldly own that were my wife a vixen, 

I would not shed a tear, e'en were she carried 

To where they first put earth and then put bricks 
on : 

I should be sadder far, had her soul tarried 
Within her body, me to play her tricks on 

I say all this, because I have the best 

Kind of a wife, that ever mortal blest ! 



While I'm about it I'll describe my Lucy: 

Her eye is deeply blue, — voice soft, hair auburn : 

Her figure gentlest sized, yet slim and juicy; 
Her fair complexion beats the tint of Thorburn ; 

It will be half a century ere you see 

Her equal ; she'd have made all Greece in war burn : 

In short, she is with female virtues filled ! 

The very sweetness of the sex distilled ! 



CANTO II.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 53 



Oh ! marriage ! solace of all human kind ; 

Oh ! bigamy ! and trigamy — thou bore ! 
Yet once I felt to polygamy inclined, 

And thought of taking one or two wives more, 
But very fortunately changed my mind, 

When just about to enter the Church door, 
By thinking if I had of wives a cart full, 
It would be rather more than even my heart full. 



I'll just relate the history of my wives ! — 
The first one was a vixen christened Jane, 

Who led me the unhappiest of lives ! — ■ 
I'm very glad she can't come back again ; 

She used to throw at me the plates and knives, 
I have a fork now sticking in my brain ! 

5 Twas thrown when rum had made her quite deli- 
rious ! 

One day day she died dead drunk ! — I'm really seri- 
ous ! 



54 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO II. 



The second, Charlotte ! — somewhat cold and hymmy ! 

The gentle Marianna followed next ! 
My fourth dear wife was Harriet, very whimmy ! 

She left me on some frivolous pretext ! 
The fifth was frolicksome — I called her Jemmy, 

And was with all her frolics never vext ! — 
The sixth floored Horace's " Nil Admirari" 
For none could help it when they gazed on Mary ! 



Patience ! dear readers, I have only two 

More spouses to describe, and then I have done ! 

My seventh wife had an eye of finest blue, 
I say on purpose eye, she had but one, 

But 'twasn't noticed on a profile view, 

And the men's gaze she wisely used to shun : 

In short I've nothing more to say in blame of her. 

As to my eighth — Heaven only knows what came of 
her! 



CANTO II.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 55 



The Abbot rose in midnight's solemn dead, 
(Taking a monk on whom he could rely,) 

And going to Ferando's shrouded bed, 
They carry him in horrid secresy, 

To a deep dungeon where he lies like lead : 
A heavy mass of slumb'rous lethargy : 

There on some straw they leave him to awaken ; 

While they to supper go on eggs and bacon. 



Next day the pious Bennet went to see 

The widow, who in weeds looked very killing ; 

He kissed her with a grave propriety, 

And found that grief had made her very willing : 

Women and monks are famed for chastity ; 
Nor can we deem a sin their mournful billing 

Altho' we might suspect if we believed 

Our senses — but the Muse may be deceived. — 



56 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO II. 



Howe'er it was, I don't pretend to say, 

But Gertrude found his conversation lightened 

Her loneliness — so he came every day, 

And at his coming her whole features brightened 

Like the dark earth at Cynthia's gentle ray, 

He came sometimes at night, which vastly fright- 
ened 

The lad/s servants, for the Abbot drest 

Himself in all Ferando's Sunday best. 



They said of course that 'twas their master's ghost, 

And ran like Belgians at Waterloo ! 
Some stood with terror stiff just like a post. 

And the nurse swore it pinched her black and blue 
For forty minutes, or an hour almost, 

And tho' she nearly had a quarter due 
Of wages, yet she could not, would not stay, 
To be disturbed at night — in such a way ! 



CANTO II.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 57 



The simple rustics who had seen Ferando 

Lying stark dead within the Abbey's cloister, 

And little dreaming what an Abbot can do, 

Thinking them good and wholesome as an oyster ; 

The rustics even yet, and to a man, do 

Believe whenever they hear the least noise stir, 

That 'tis the jealous ghost, condemned to roam 

Abroad, as punishment for sins at home ! 



Some swore they heard the clanking of his chains ; 

And some swore that he had no chains at all : 
Some that he roared aloud with hellish pains, 

While others said he let no murmur fall : 
One lady, blest with rare poetic brains, 

Distinctly swore, that coming from a ball 
She saw the goblin, miserable croaker, 
Dance in his fetters Jullien's last new Polka! 



58 



THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [.CANTO II. 



It cost me no small time and pains to find 
A rhyme to Polka ; once I tried all night, 

And poked in every corner of my mind, — 

T'will take a month to put my brains all right : 

I tried this word — then other words combined ; 
And almost said — I own — I'm vanquished quite ! 

There's but one bard I know, a worthy fellow, 

Who rhymes at will, and that is Bard Sordello. 



One doctor made a solemn affidavit 

Before the Lord Mayor of the town, that going 
To see a neighbour's child, in hopes to save it, 

He of a sudden had a mighty blow in 
His abdomen. Your pardon — let me crave it 

For such a word. And he his arms out-throwing 
The goblin caught, who bolted like an eel : — 
In fact, he was as slippery as Peel. 



CANTO II.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 59 



We left Ferando lying in a sleep 

From which at three days' end he slowly woke ; 
He rubbed his eyes, and then began to weep, 

Then into louder lamentation broke, 
For he could nothing see but darkness deep ; 

And let me tell you, reader, 'tis no joke 
To wake up — find yourself kicked out of bed 
And not know whether you're alive or dead ! 



Right suddenly the monk (our Abbot's friend) 

Came to Ferando with a little candle 
In one hand ; in the other, a rope's end, 

Which he commenced with jockey skill to handle. 
The half awakened sot began to send 

Such moans and shrieks, to manhood's very scandal, 
You would have surely sworn — had there you been, 
'Twas Hamlet being murdered by young Kean. 



60 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO II. 



" Where am I ?" said Ferando, roaring out 
Like a mad bull (so goes Boccaccio's story) — 

"Where are you," said the monk with hideous shout, 
"Where you should be, you fool, in Purgatory !" 

And then again his scourge he laid about 

The husband's back till it was torn and gory. 

" What — am I dead V 9 (the poor Ferando bellows ;) 

" Yes, and in torment too for being jealous !" 



After a time the monk grew faint and tired 
Of lashing, so he paused and wiped his head ; 

For being corpulent, he much perspired : 

Then bringing forth some meat, and wine, and 
bread, 

He gave it to Ferando, who enquired 

"If men could eat and drink when they were dead?" 

For tho' a fool — thought he — " The very deuce 

Is in it, if dead men have gastric juice." 



CANTO II. J THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 61 



"'Tis true (replied the monk), the meat and drink 
You see before you was this morning brought 

By your unhappy wife, who is, I think, 
A pattern for all widows : she has bought 

Ten pounds of good wax candles, and won't shrink 
From buying 'till she has your freedom wrought 

From Purgatory ; she all wives surpasses — 

She's killing all the monks with singing masses ! 



To get your soul from this accursed place, 

Your friend the Abbot's hoarse as any raven ; 

And black as any negro in the face ! 

But doubtless as your appetite is craving ; 

At least I judge so from your lean grimace, 
You'd better be some little dinner having; 

But eat it slowly — masticate your food, 

Or else, my friend, 'twill do you little good !" 



62 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO II. 



Ferando having fasted three whole days, 

And three whole nights, was glad to get his dinner : 

But still he swallowed it in some amaze, 
For tho' he was a very stupid sinner, 

He could not swallow all the priesthood says ! — 
" Charles James' charge" chokes many a young be- 
ginner, 

And if you add " white surplices," 'tis plain, 

The human stomach brings all up again. 



The conscience is a very tender organ ! 

Sometimes capricious : sometimes fixed and stable : 
At times it will adore a Thug or Gorgon, 

At other moments feels itself unable 
To bow to any god, all faith and law gone — 

Clean swept away, like to the Tower of Babel, 
Which Nimrod Intellect built up so high, 
As tho' to show it could not reach the sky. 



CANTO II. 1 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 63 



Ferando, tlio' he eat like any glutton, 

Scarcely believed that he was really eating : 

Not that he had a faith in " ideal mutton," 
He laid it to a kind of dreamy cheating ; 

Perhaps he had a theory like Hutton, 

Who wrote a learned book himself defeating ; 

I cannot swear Ferando's thoughts were such : 

Only he knew he'd gormandized too much. 



This is the way with all your mighty thinkers ! 

Philosophers, geologists, and sawbones ! 
And that most famous band, " the wandering Tin- 
kers," 

Who talk on 'till we feel for their poor jawbones ; 
They calculate how many water drinkers 

Would drink the sea : then Bloody Head and 
Rawbones, 
They prove, if man adopts the water cure, 
There'll be no water left, they're very sure. 



64 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO II. 



Ferando after eating fell asleep, 

Whereon the monk effected his retreat, 

And left him to enjoy his slumbers deep : 

Next night he took again more bread and meat, 

And woke the man — who felt old hunger creep 
Upon him, so he craved some food to eat ! 

The monk replied, " before you taste, Sinner ! 

I must give you an appetite for dinner!" 



Thereon he lashed him with most famous spite, 
And as he lashed he sung a funeral hymn, 

Pausing at times to say it served him right, 
Declaring he'd excoriate every limb, 

And that he must endure this every night 

Till e'en the stars of Heaven grew old and dim ! 

At this Ferando took to raving madly, 

And swore the Saints were acting very badly. 



CANTO II.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 65 



" Where's Saint Ignatius ? "Where's Saint Jeremy ? 

And where my patron Saint old Gregory ? 
How could he ever let the villains bury me ? 

Oh ! may the Saints all come to beggary, 
If they don't send old Charon's boat to ferry me 

From this vile place ; — you've got my leg awry 
You'll break the bone, you villanous old goblin, 
And I thro' all Eternity go hobbling." 

XXXVII. 

" Peace, sacrilegious vagabond," replied 

The monk, whose piety was shocked 'yond measure 

To hear opprobrious epithets applied 

To Saints, who are the Pope's invested treasure. 

He therefore once more lashed the poor man's hide, 
And said it was the Saints' divinest pleasure 

To torture men ! (for Saints are first officious, 

Then troublesome — at last they grow malicious !) 



66 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO II. 



But hunger tames the Hon and the sinner, 
Yea tames the very savagest of things. 

Nations are often kept without their dinner — 
(I wish they'd try this method on their kings^ 

But not upon our Queen ; I would not thin her 
Most gracious face for twenty sovereigns, 

For, let me whisper (this ourselves between), 

Like Melbourn I am too fond of the Queen ! 



Therefore Ferando begged the monk to spare 
His feelings, for he could no longer stand it, 

But should do something in his fierce despair, 
Which would ashame a Bishop or a Bandit. 

The monk then gave to him his daily fare ; — 
He eat it like a glutton, or a grand cit 

Who fasts and purges for a week, to lay 

In a good appetite for Lord Mayor's day ! 



CANTO II.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 6/ 



While the poor Franklin eat, the monk began 
To tell him there was not a sin so base 

As filthy jealousy, which brings a man 
To Purgatory (that most dreadful place) : 

At this the tears from poor Ferando ran, 

And nearly washed the whiskers from his face ; 

" Oh ! injured wife !— the very best in Florence, 

I now confess I am my own abhorrence." 



Then breathing forth a groan most piteously, 
He begged the monk to tell him all he knew : 

Who forthwith forged a very pleasant lie, 

Which poor Ferando swallowed down as true : 

He told him he was born in Italy, 

Where skies are sometimes black and sometimes 
blue, 

And that he had a very jealous master, 

From whence sprang all his penance and disaster. 



68 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO II. 



For ah ! I helped him in his jealous folly 
Instead of aiding the suspected dame, 

"Who first took to a kind of melancholy 
Ere she encouraged a poetic flame ; 

At last she let the Muses take her wholly, 
And lost all sense of womanhood and shame ; 

For one day she put on her shawl and bonnet, 

x\nd bolted with the writer of a sonnet. 



Which is of jealous doubts the sure effect, 
For wives are but a very fragile crockery ; — 

Therefore if you betray that you suspect 
Their virtue, they disdain the mockery 

Of smiling looks, when the great faith is wrecked 
On fell suspicion, — that black rock awry, 

Standing, for ever frowning, — yet concealed, 

x\nd only when the ruin's past, revealed ! 



CANTO II. 1 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 69 



Therefore this dreadful penance I endure 

For all my sins , past, future and the present ; 

Its blest result, that it perchance may cure 
Your jealousy, a frailty most unpleasant. 

It is no happiness to me, be sure, 

To flog you like a girl or Polish peasant, 

In short, I'm not the common hangman, nor 

Russia's chief Greenacre, the Emperor ! 



They say, that Nicholas, the Russian czar 
Flogged Polish ladies at the Insurrection, 

When Warsaw threw his impious chains afar, 
(A weak rehearsal of the resurrection), 

And tho' unarmed was maddened into war ! 
But fate and doctors like a large dissection, 

So thousands died because a villain ruled : 

While Saints maintained the human blood was cooled! 



70 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO II. 



war and trumpets ! — peace and penny whistles ! 

How is it that a wholesale slaughter brings 
(Instead of stinging plants and thorny thistles), 

The wreath of laurel on the brow of Kings ? 
Is it that weak digestions feed on gristles, 

Or that the tortured linnet better sings ? 
Truth here declares she sees no better reason, 
Why loyalty is less a vice than treason ! 



We'll deem Ferando heard these sentiments, 
And that they did not shock his Tory morals, 

We now hear more than fifteen out of twenty gents, 
Think duelling the Christian end of quarrels ;. 

And that by our prosperity is meant high rents : 
In short, that all mankind are stupid squirrels, 

Who rush for ever round an iron cage 

Instead of going farther every age. 



CANTO II.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 71 



The monk informed Ferando that his wife, 
Spent all her money, and her time for him ; 

And that she parcelled out her daily life , 
In trying to release him, soul and limb, 

From all the pangs of purgatorial strife : 
'Twas first a " paternoster," then a " dim " 

Kind of wax taper : last, a horrid chaunt 

Made up of uncle, grandmother and aunt ! 



" All this, will doubtless, in due time (said he) 
Release you from this shocking place of tears. 

We'll hope once more you will the daylight see, 
Tho' really, to my sight, it now appears, 

Your only vice was foolish jealousy ; 

You can amend that fault in future years, 

That is if your dear wife should agitate 

For your release : if so your chance is great." 



72 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO II. 



You see that Purgatory has its tattle, 

xind that the dead are not so very stupid ; 

Perchance what we do christen the death rattle, 
Are the first lispings of the future' Cupid ! 

Sometimes a peace is brought on by a battle ; 
And battles are sometimes gained by a group hid 

Behind a hillock ; — thus what we can't see, 

May very often gain the victory. 



With these reflections moral and religious 
The monk left poor Ferando to his dose, 

Of daily slumber, which soon grew prodigious, 
For being shut up in a dungeon close, 

Inclines to sleep like down-beds at the Bridge House 
Hotel ; one should be careful where he goes, 

For at an inn upon the Rhine, Smith swears, 

The fleas combined, and carried him down stairs. 



CANTO II.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 73 
LII. 

We'll therefore leave Ferando to his dreams, 
Which constitute so nearly half our life ; 

The gourmand snores in turtle, wine and creams ; 
The foolish maiden dreams she is a wife ; 

Or else in single blessedness she screams 

Cantatas, which cut through you like a knife : 

The sable sweep dreams of the joys of May-days ; — 

Montgomery dreams he's preaching to the ladies. 

LIII. 

The poet sometimes dreams of poesie, 

And that he sits crowned with the deathless wreath, 
On great Olympus, towering in the sky ; 

Beneath his feet are darkness, woe and death, 
Above him, — life and immortality ; 

Around him is a world of loving breath ! 
Inspired by these to angel hearts he sings ! — 
He wakes to critics, taxes, wives and kings ! 

END OF CANTO II. 



ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 



Canto BEE 



ABBOT OF FLORENCE, 



E iJTate of Boccaccio. 



CANTO III. 



We left our hero in a purgatory 

Where every husband isj or else will be ; — 
Should any Caudle contradict my stor}^ — 

(And make an oath to his felicity — ) 
Adding, he's married been (memento mori !) 

Of mortal years the space of twenty-three : 
It proves he is accustomed to his Bedlam, 
And feels the butcher's knife no more than dead 
lamb. 



THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO III. 



But I who have been married ninety years, 
(Sweet truth forgive me, 'tis nineteen I find,) 

Great sorrow's weight the human spirit sears, 
And puts a buffalo's hide upon the mind, 

So that we feel not matrimonial spears, 

Which altho' sharp scratch but the outer rind, 

And never hurt the Soul — that mighty kernel — 

For if you crack life's shell, you touch not the 
Eternal. 



The Abbot now was growing somewhat weary 
Of Gertrude's beauty, so he thought it time 

To let Ferando from his dungeon dreary : — 
He might begin to think upon his crime, 

For I have found when quite tired of " one's deary," 
Pleasure which once seemed rapturous and sublime, 

Looked sad and loathsome — lifeless — soulless — 
tame ; — 

One scarcely can believe it is the same ! 



CANTO III.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 79 

IV. 

Satiety is often called repentance, 

And incapacity for sin, reform ; 
Sins leave us, and we swearthat they'vebeen sent hence, 

Like devils driven from us, strong and warm, 
When the fact is they're worn out like to bent aunts 

Who' re doubled down with age and sorrow's storm : 
There is but one who can cast out a sin ! — 
Philosophy invites the Devil in ! 

v, 
There's an old simile upon an apple 

That grows somewhere about the famous Dead 
Sea, 
But I'm inclined to think we often map ill, 

For fruit like this grows nearer far the Red Sea : 
I mean the ruby lips at church and chapel, 

Which often makes my blood like to a fled sea, 
Which rallying its waves returns in blue skips 
To shiver on the rosy beach of two lips. 



80 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO III. 



There was another reason why the priest 
Desired to set our hero from his gaol ; 

The ninth revolving moon — the eighth at least — 
Was growing small and thin, a curled rat's tail, 

Whereas the lady's figure was increased, 
As Shakspere says, like to a swelling sail, 

When made enceinte "by the god Eolus !" — 

Perchance the widow might have got it solus ! 

VII. 

That's no affair of mine, I don't pretend 
To be th' accoucheur to the " virgin nine ;" 

What I contend for is, nine months will end 
All doubts of friendship, howsoe'er divine. 

As for your pious or platonic friend, 
I would not trust a pretty wife of mine 

With either, for I know, to Nature's scandal, 

Men rush at maids like moths rush to the candle. 



CANTO III.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 81 



In midnight's darkness when the stars were fled, 
The Abbot sought Ferando's gloomy den, 

And in a counterfeited voice he said, 
" Awake — arise, thou happiest of men, 

For I am sent to fetch thee from the dead 
To see thy friends and family again ; 

And thy fond wife, who has, I truly swear, 

Been put to bed with a fine son and heir. 



" For know, she had, Ferando, when you died, 
Newly conceived the child that's born to day, 

The chubbiest baby that you ever spied. 
Like yours, his eyes are of the finest gray ; 

But I forbear to rouse a father's pride, 
Who finds out music in a donkey's bray, 

And thinks its squall Rubini's notes surpass, 

If he's the parent of the little ass. 



82 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO III. 



"'Tis very natural — but I'll say no more, 
Ferando, now to hurt your 'l'amour propre,' 

Soon you shall hear the little darling roar. 
You're cured of jealousy, my friend, I hope, 

If not, you'll die again, and have some more 
Of darkness, fasting, goblins and the rope ! 

But don't expect to 'scape, as now, the curse ; — 

For you'll go farther then, and fare much worse ! 



" Name the child Bennet, to that great Saint's glory ! 

For 'tis to him, the Abbot and your wife, 
That you have been released from Purgatory, 

To all the blessings of your former life I" 
(My readers must of course believe the story, 

Tho' palpably with honest truth at strife,) 
'Tis better far to gulp absurdities, 
Than think that clergymen would tell us lies ! 



CANTO III.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 83 



Ferando quite believed the tale, and cried, 
" Oh ! blessed wife and Abbot, blessed Saint, 

Whom I love more than all the Saints beside ; 
But I should like some food ! I'm feeling faint :" 

" Here is your daily meal :" the voice replied : 
" Eat and rejoice, and let no sorrow taint 

The last day that you'll spend in this dark place : 

To-morrow you will see the world's bright face ! " 



The Abbot mixed some powder with this wine, 
Which was sufficient to entrance four hours, 

So when he'd drank it down, like any swine, 
He lay bereft of all his conscious powers : 

The monk and Abbot then their efforts join, 

And bear him straightway from the dungeon towers : 

Then having drest him in his shroud of gloom, 

They lay him snugly in his former tomb. 



84 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO III. 



Ferando slept until the break of day, 

"When waking from his trance he saw the light 
Stream thro' the broken chinks, which stern decay 

Had made e'en in that sepulchre of night. 
He rubbed his eyes, and then began to say, 

" The purgatorial fiend has told me right, 
For as I live I see the daylight thro' 

The crannies in the tomb — I'll swear I do / " 



Perceiving plainly that he was not dead, 
He cried aloud — " Oh let me out, Fve been 

Long enough here in this sepidchral bed : 
I should not be surprised if I am green, 

Or else on me the hungry worms had fed ; 
I wonder what the Devil that they mean, 

P'raps when the hungry myriads came to stuff, 

They did not think my carcase ' game' enough !" 



CANTO III.] THE AEBOT OF FLORENCE. 85 



The jolly monks were going to their breakfast, 
When suddenly they heard Ferando call : 

Their first attempt was fright — a kind of make fast 
To any thing, even a play-house wall : 

Then they began to pray aloud, and shake fast, 
As tho' they never meant to rest at all ; 

And then they got into a kind of frantic 

Hopping and jumping, like the Polka antic. 



Then they subsided to an adjuration 
Of sin and Satan, ghosts and heretics, 

Calling on Heaven to extirpate a nation, 

Because a deadish man was playing merry tricks ; 

One gourmand monk began a long oration 
On ill results, when men their sherry mix 

With ale, port, rum, and stout, in stomach vault ; 

But, they all said, the salmon was in fault. 



86 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO III. 



The Abbot stood undaunted, — waved his hand, 
And bade the monks regain their usual valour ; 

At his rebuke they try like men to stand, 
Altho' they are as pale as Russian tallow : 

But I would have my readers understand 
That piety proceeds from looking sallow, 

And that a man of hearty brain and liver 

Ne'er wrote a verse, nor jumped into the river. 



Ferando, who had kicked with fleshly kicks 
Against the sides of this most orthodox 

Burial vault, knocked in the feeble bricks 
That did not wait to have a dozen knocks, 

But fell at once like James at Limerick ; — 
This flippant sort of poem doubtless shocks 

The stupid class, who read Blackwood and Ainsworth, 

Whose curls and whiskers are more than all his brain's 
worth. 



CANTO III.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 8/ 



Our hero, not the Abbot, but the man 

Who had been buried, stood in great amazement 

By the tomb's side, — the monks in terror ran : 
The Abbot then inquired what all their ways meant? 

(He was a great believer in " our Dan :") 
" Is it a wonder that a man long days pent 

In gloomy grave should, when I tell, rise 

And taste again his dinner and the skies ? 



"But not alone to me belongs the praise, 

One third to Bennet, Saint renowned and blest, 

The other third his pious wife repays, 

For all the troubles of her widowed breast ; 

If there is any left, (the legend says,) 
'Tis clearly due to this delightful nest 

Of pious monks, whose virtues are declared 

By this new miracle," at which they stared ! 



88 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO III. 



Ferando threw himself upon his knees, 

And crying, " Holy father, by your pleading, 

St. Bennet's, and my wife's, I've got this ease : 
I thank you much for your kind interceding ; 

I hope in future, ghostly sir, to please 
My wife by all my former errors weeding, 

So that my future life shall be a garden ; 

Doubtless on those terms she will grant me pardon." 



" Go, (said the Abbot,) comfort your fair wife, 
Who ever since your death has been a martyr 

To sorrow, with all comfort e'er at strife, 
Declining with contempt and scorn a charter 

Which would have made her wealthy for her life ; — 
But she declined the matrimonial barter, 

And loudly swore 'she'd rather be your widow, 

Than marry one whose wealth was huge as Skiddaw/ 



CANTO III.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 89 



" Love, cherish and make much of her, therefore ! 

Afflict her with your jealousy no more. 
For having you, what else, sir, can she care for?" 

" I warrant you," said he, " I shall adore 
Her for the future, without why or wherefore : 

My shoulders now are feeling somewhat sore 
For doubting my dear wife would deign to leer 
On a life-guardsman, priest, or grenadier." 



The monks sang "Miserere" in a chorus, 

Which made of music general rout and slaughter, 

As tho' a band of Hullah's rushed before us 
Leading in either hand a wife and daughter, 

And doing their unearthly best to bore us : — 
The Abbot sprinkled him with holy water 

And muttered Latin, which they say he scanned ill ; 

He then put in his hand a lighted candle. 



90 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO III. 



They call them " sacred tapers," (powers of old !) 
I know the tallow-chandler who dips 'em : — 

By him as vulgar candles they are sold, 

And with a common pair of shears he clips 'em : 

He cheated me one day, and called them mould, 
For which his conscience to this moment whips 
him : 

I wonder if a short six, or long seven 

Is the best dip to light a pope to Heaven ! 



"Go home, Ferando," said the Abbot, "go, 
And never afterwards your dear wife vex : 

Cherish and love her ! — She's, I'd have you know, 
The crowning glory of her virtuous sex : 

Tell her I thought her wrong to mourn you so, 
But still the lustre of her weeping decks 

Her beauteous face more than a West End milliner ; — 

I really thought one time her grief was killing her !" 



CANTO III.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 91 



Without another word Ferando went, 

And walked in this array towards his dwelling 

The people stared in blank astonishment, 
Then fled away, their terror loudly yelling : 

One woman did not stay to pay her rent, 

She'd been the day before her chattels selling : 

Sometimes therefore a ghost may seem to play 

His tricks suspiciously near quarter-day. 



Ferando reached at last his lawful door, 

Then rang the bell and gave his usual knock : 

The housemaid came, but fell upon the floor 
Jn strong hysterics at the sudden shock : 

The footman sprung up stairs and gave a roar, 
Which made the house like any cradle rock : 

The cook rushed up to see what was the matter, 

And screamed " a ghost," then dropped her pudding 
batter. 



92 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO III. 



The governess, whose nerves were more expensive, 
With scientific footsteps sought the place 

From whence proceeded noises so extensive ; 
Seeing Ferando she assumed a face 

First agitated : solemn next : —then pensive, 
Saying, " It was a most unheard-of case," 

While the fair housemaid said, in accents faster, 

" 'Tis either, miss, the devil or my master." 



Ferando walked up stairs to see his wife, 

Who bore his coming with great resignation ; 

He found her with the doctor at some strife, 
WTio argued for a speedy vaccination, 

Else he'd not answer for the baby's life : 
He proved his case with great elaboration, 

And grew so eloquent on the pock called chicken, 

All got impatient for fhe child to sicken ! 



CANTO III.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 93 



He then described the symptoms, past and present, 
Which appertain to measles, and the croup, 

Which made the hearers feel somewhat unpleasant, 
As tho' they were about to have a group 

Of all the ills which wait on peer and peasant : — 
Ferando being weak, brought up the soup 

Which he had swallowed when he came to life : 

Part went upon the doctor — part his wife. 



The doctor brought a basin, and prescribed 

Warm water, which, said he, no doubt is handy ; 

The invalid with great discretion bribed 
The nurse to add to it a little brandy : 

I've often been myself jeered at and gibed, 
By some old maid or antiquated dandy, 

For writing fifteen lines on brandy twanging ; — 

Wordsworth wrote fifteen sonnats praising hanging. 



94 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO III. 



Ferando, when the hubbub was allayed, 
Told to his gaping audience many a story, 

Of what his fellow-sufferers had said, 
While being criticised in Purgatory ; — 

That Peter Bell confessed he'd kissed a maid 
When under influences amatory : — 

While Rogers, unpoetical old fellow, 

Beat off the Muses with his silk umbrella ! 



'Mong other news, that Wordsworth was made beadle 
And Poet Laureate to the spinster Nine ; 

Moreover, that he still would spout, and read all 
His ponderous verses to those nymphs divine ! 

Apollo told his sisters they would need all 

Their patience for his "Volume on the Rhine ;" 

For having there to praise Victoria's cousins, 

He'd multiplied his duhaess by their dozens ! 



CANTO III.] THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 95 



Whereat the bard waxed furious, and swore 
That future ages should read every word, — 

In fact, he meant to write seven volumes more ! 
'Tis said, when poor posterity had heard 

The precious legacy they had in store, 

They forthwith to Olympian Jove preferred 

Their prayer, that if events were thus to fall, 

They'd really rather not be born at all ! 



And in this chatty limbo he was told 

Celestial consolation fell like dew 
On Ingoldsby, whose spirit ne'er was cold, 

When want and suffering urged its story true : 
Methinks I now thy jocund face behold, 

Thou best and wittiest of the mirthful crew : 
Whose song was ever in the comic key, 
At war with dismal Home and tragedy ! 



96 THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. [CANTO 



Ferando never quarrelled after this 

With Gertrude, who on her part gave up pouts, 
Meeting him night and morning with a kiss : — 

He let her go to sermons, balls, and routs, 
"Which was to her the perfect form of bliss ! 

If any reader entertains his doubts 
Touching the good effects of Purgatory, 
May he one day be hero of the story ! 






THE END. 



SALVESTRA, 

;a Cale of Boccaccio. 
Canto 3t. 



SALVESTRA, 

a 3Tale of £o«accto. 
CANTO I. 



In Spenser's stanza, I would quaintly write 

A fine old story from Boccaccio. 
Alas ! that love so formed for rich delight 

Should often he so full of bitter woe — 

But from the first it ever has been so ! 
This " ancient saw " it is I would areed, 

But eke the theme would force to undergo 
Full many "a modern instance ;" and proceed 
Men's "business" thus to reach, and make their 
"bosom" bleed. 



100 SALVESTRA. [CANTO I. 



Love is like Death, that all things equal makes, 

To the same level brings both high and low ; 
Sleeps high enthroned, but stoops when he awakes, 

And Wealth or Power to Beauty bids to bow. 

— In Florence lived a maiden— fair, I trow, 
And a brave youth, who loved, nor loved in vain ; 

Her heart to melt availed his music vow, 
And not like Neuryg's verse to jolt the brain ; 
The knave who wrote his worst to increase his 
chance of gain. 



He thought his verses bad enough to sell, 

The public taught him soon they were too bad. 
— Whoso would snatch at fame, not earn it well, 

Let disappointment so his spirit mad ! 

But make, ye Muses ! patient poets glad — 
Those who with faith and hope their souls sustain, 

And serve you wisely, through misfortune sad, 
Singing a deep and high, though sober strain, 
Nor condescend, through craft, to work a meaner 
vein. 



CANTO I.] SALVESTRA. 101 



Who knows not Florence, knows not Italy ; 

Not Italy, the world. At Rome there dwells, 
In statued pride of place, Sublimity : 

But Beauty scatters, here, her glittering spells; 

And echoes, to the vale, the oracles, 
That reach her from the lofty Appennines ; 

And, to the city in her bosom, tells 
Of distant voices, that are hymning shrines, 
Far up beyond the stars, where light perpetual 
shines. 



And some among her citizens have heard 
The heavenly tones — our own Boccaccio, 

The Bard of Prose ; and Dante, who conferred 
With the departed, nor in realms below 
Stayed, but, permitted, visited also 

The paradisal orbs ; heroic man, 

Religious poet ; and learned there to glow 

Even with the Love wherein the worlds began, 

Having, with holy dread, beheld " our Pelican !'' 



102 SALVE STRA. [CANTO I. 



And Galileo, who, from Fiesoli, 

Through optic tube, the stars at distance saw, 
With Milton for his guest ; and those great Three — 

Massaccio, Raphael, Angelo, who law 

Gave to great Art, and teach to Genius awe — 
O Florence fair ! O vale of Arno ! clad 

On the hill side and by the forest shaw, 
At morn and eve, with mist — nor grey nor sad — 
But bathing all in gold, still beautiful and glad 1 



Our Legend is of Love. By ours, I mean 
Mine and Boccaccio's. "Ego et Bex mens." 

In Florence we have said, doth lie the scene — 
;We must be born where e'er the Fates decree us — 
Nay, from their shackles do they ever free us ? 

Nor is the choice of parents in our power, 
Whose duty 'tis in childhood to o'ersee us, 

And deem it such, in some unlucky hour, 

To o'erlook our want, our wish — our nature's primal 
dower. 



SALVESTRAo 103 



Ah! their o'erseeing is too oft o'erlooking ! 

Our heroine and our hero proved it so— 
'Tis time, methinks, their names I should be booking ; 

Salvestra, she ; — and he, Girolamo, 

A princely Merchant's son — a mere boy, who 
Played with the girl from veriest infancy, 

As brothers with their sisters sometimes do — 
If seldom, does not instinct tell us why ? 
For still in nature lives a wise propriety ! 



He was, we've said, a princely Merchant's son : 
She was a Tailor's daughter — fair, of course ; 

All tailors' daughters are — a fact well known, 
And as well known its philosophic source, 
Between the two admitting no divorce. 

Even Willis, flippant lozel transatlantic, 

Of both the effect and reason can discourse — 

The tailor's sense of beauty makes him frantic, 

And operates in a way that's clearly necromantic ; 



104 SALVESTRA. [CANTO I. 



Since thus the father's fancy moulds the mother's ! 

Rank heresy in physics ! it may not be 
In metaphysics — ask the prophet Brothers, 

Or Zadkiel ! if you a dupe or sot be — 

But if, my friend ! you would not . . I know what be . . 
To all eternity, for ass or fool, 

Learn of my doctrine ; thus your better lot be, 
Even if yourself no sophist, by your rule, 
To be adjudged as one who sits in Wisdom's school. 



I would describe the lady ; but I hate 

Description ; and, in passion, would imply, 

The Beauty that had caused it, soon or late : 
Yet thus much I will say ; beneath the sky, 
There was none lovelier, with arched neck, dark eye, 

And marble shoulders, and a bosom white 
As Juno's swans : unborrowed dignity, 

Graces untaught, and manners that delight, 

Because but natural — these were hers as by birth- 
right. 



CANTO I.] SALVESTRA. 105 



Yet all these make not Beauty, if there lacks 
Expression in the gesture ; without that, 

You have no woman, but a doll in wax — 

Stake Virgil's "iEneid" against Virgil's "Gnat," 
Salvestra lacked it not. Expression sat, 

Throned on her brow, and cradled in her cheek, 
A mystic, undefined " you know not what," 

That seems like pictured music — yet so meek, 

And gentle, you would cease to breathe to hear her 
speak. 



Nor was Girolamo uncouth or stupid ; 

Indeed, when on the knee or at the breast, 
His mother's flatterers called the infant " Cupid," 

And afterwards when clad in virile vest, 

A full-grown boy, " Adonis :" for the rest, 
He had a heart, we know, since he could love, 

Which the young hunter could not; hence more blest, 
Than Mammon's adulators could approve, 
Whose hearts are of the flint, no feeling e'er may move. 



106 SALVESTRA. [CANTO I. 



But to our story. Young Girolamo 

Loved fair Salvestra, with a love that grew 
Even with his growth ; till it became him so, 

That but with her himself for nought he knew ; 

Him to her side such strong attraction drew : 
His heart, by some mesmeric agency, 

Lodged in her bosom, to his own untrue, 
Whence he, by transfer of vitality, 
Could live but where she lived — apart from her must 
die. 



'Tw r as thus he felt, and thought, and always spoke ; 

His mother listened while he raved, till tired — 
Then said — " 'Twas far too serious for a joke — 

That Mesmer was a quack — the patients hired — 

Somnambulism a humbug uninspired — 
That Cupid was an urchin, must be whipped, 

"Whenever Mammon's interests required; 
And for Girolamo himself, equipped, 
For foreign travel, he should instantly be shipped ! 



CANTO I.] SALVESTRA. 107 



" I have already with your guardians talked — 
(0 ! what would your dear father now have said ?) 

We have resolved your passion shall be balked — 
(A son should show some reverence to the dead — 
Have I not been your father in his stead ? 

Father and mother to you, both in one ? 

Talk of your heart ! 'tis but a lump of lead !) 

You'll thank us by and by for what we've done, 

Though now you think it hard. Away — away — 
my son !" 



Of her Oration, this was but a part ; 

Lady Sighieri had great power of speech ; 
Like Lady Hester Stanhope, 'twas an art 

She cultivated, and was proud to teach — 

Its deepest mysteries she contrived to reach. 
Her husband's patience had been nightly tried, 

With curtain lecture, she was wont to preach, 
Whereof, 'tis said, poor Lionardo died — 
Hence 'twas, she found no man would after make 
her bride. 



108 SALVESTRA. [CANTO I. 



They say, that here I should insert a stanza 

On Mrs. Caudle, alias Mrs. Jerrold — 
{Vide an Opera, by Signor Lanza) — 

But it misfits her faults should thus be feruled ; 

I would not be the man my wife's to herald ! 
Pen, ink, and paper, in the house ; I wonder 

She don't reply ! Knew he himself thus periled, 
What scribbling husband but would soon knock under, 
And fear to read in type the speech he heard in 
thunder ? 



Well knew Girolamo 'twould be in vain 

To stay the current, when 'twas once set in : 

Well knew the same his Guardians — and were fain 
To let her will have way, and scape the din. — 
" This Boy of mine," — she would with them begin, 

" But fourteen years of age, to fall in love, 
Is strange, provoking, quite a kind of sin ! 

Precocious passion, monstrous far above 

The Megatherium old, yet fond as petted dove. 



CANTO I.] SALVESTRA. 109 



"A tailor's daughter ! Think of that, good sirs, 

The daughter of the ninth part of a man ! 
One sees in that how young affection errs ! 

We must remove him — quickly as we can ; 

Lest he our opposition closely scan, 
And wed her privately, to spite us all, 

And shorten thus my life's too narrow span — 
O ! should she thus Girolamo enthral, 
Their bridal bed would be my bier of funeral ! 



" Or — since he's duteous — if he should refraiu, 

And sacrifice his wishes to our pride, 
He would consume and pine with inward pain, 

To see her soon become another's bride ! 

What else in such a case can we provide, 
But send him hence ? Methinks, it were but wise, 

He should in Paris with our factors bide, 
That he may learn the ways of merchandize, 
And snare in other scenes and opportunities." 



110 SALVESTRA. [CANTO I. 



Eftsoons, the Guardians heartily agreed, 

The thing proposed was best, and should he done. 

<i Good youth !" said they, "'tis time you now should 
heed 
Your own affairs, and how they're carried on — 
In self-improvement you shall grow anon 

In Paris, while in Florence you regrade ; 

Collision with the world shall give bon ton ; 

Fashion and rank shall lend you willing aid ; 

A year may serve the turn, and you'll be thus re- 
made!" 

XXIII. 

Girolamo was stunned ; yet, desperate, tried 

To reason; grew the Dame then vehement; 
Now he exclaimed in passion, she replied 

With fiercer, stronger, wildly eloquent ; 

He became sullen, she more violent : 
But when she found him mute, she changed the key, 

And wooed him mildly ; like a storm-cloud spent, 
Shed tears — a deluge, wherefrom 'scaping, he 
Would dare the Arno's tide, or brave the angry sea. 



CANTO I.] SALVESTRA. Ill 

XXIV. 

Aboard ! aboard ! Adown the Arno gliding, 

The argosy sails proudly beautiful ; 
More treasure now within her bosom hiding, 

Than all the wealth that clothes and crowns the 
dull— 

A Lover's Heart, of dreams and passions full, 
Of fancies rich and gorgeous and divine, 

Like a great Poet's brain, whose tide to lull, 
Star-spheres do sing, and the chaste Moon doth shine, 
Reaching the cerebral mass through his admiring 
eyne. 

XXV. 

Bright Arno ! Who'd not rest upon thy billow, 

Like a rapt bridegroom, if his heart were free 
To wed thee, as upon a fluid pillow 

That yielded to the pressure pleasingly ? 

Who'd not an Adriatic make of thee, 
And with a ducal ring espouse thy wave, 

Even from thy fountains to the Tuscan sea, 
Child of the Appennines ; whether thou lave 
The Hermit-City, or the shores, where sleep the 
brave 1 



112 SALVESTRA. [CANTO I. 



But what is there in thee to solace him, 

Exile from love, and hurried to that barque, 

A spectral barque, and manned with demons grim, 
Rigged in eclipse when Sun and Moon were dark, 
And Nature, like a corse, with horror stark — 

No farewell spoken, no remembrance left, 
Token of happy hours, the pledge and mark 

Of fond arTection, forcibly bereft 

From all that still it loved, the heart asunder cleft ? 



All this of course had been contrived before, 
That furtively, as you may understand, 

He might quit Florence, and, being put on shore 
At Pisa, thence by Genoa, overland, 
Reach France and Paris . By which underhand 

Proceeding, poor Salvestra nothing knew 

Of his departure, even though from the strand 

She watched, with mystic sense, as it withdrew, 

The stately barque that held her lover young and true ! 



CANTO I.] SALVESTRA. 113 



Salvestra looks at the receding sail 

With ignorant complacence ; yet, I've hinted, 
A mystic sense, like an incipient ail, 

Troubles her mind : — So literal misprinted, 

Though on the plaguy proofs no pains were stinted, 
An Author's, in his work just new from press — 

Type of a grief shall be more deeply dinted, 
As time wears on and life wears out — distress, 
With disappointment soured, embittered bitterness. 



There lies, besides, a well of gentle feeling 

Within that Maiden's heart : — it now is stirred, 

And in the motion seems to seek for healing ; 
Like to the winglets of a little bird, 
There is a nutter in her bosom — heard 

More by the inner sense than by the ear — ■ 
A murmur then— a syllable — a word — 

And then a linked utterance calm and clear 

Sighs through her tremulous lips — a simple lyric. 

Hear ! — 

i 



114 SALVESTRA. [CANTO I. 



CANZONE. 



THE CLAIRVOYANT TO HER HEART. 



1. 

I think of Ariadne, 
While sails that Barque away, 

Upon the Arno dancing, 
So gallant and so gay ! 

Why do I think of her now ? 
Tell me, my Heart ! O, say ! 



2. 

My Theseus ne'er will leave me — 
Then sail, thou Barque ! away — 

Yet why should thought thus grieve me, 
Upon this sunny day ? 

Why do I think of her now ? 
Tell me, my Heart ! O, say ! 



CANTO I.] SALVESTRA. 135 

XXX. 

" Why should' st thou not ?" sudden exclaimed a Voice 

Beside her, and she started to her feet — 
" — Why should' st thou not? And why would' st 
thou rejoice 1 

Men will prove false, when maids prove indiscreet ; 

Girolamo for thee was all unmeet ! 
Far has he gone from Florence — far away ! 

You'll sport no more together in the street ! 
He'll ne'er return, or not for many a day, 
Nor know thee when he does — his heart with him 
will stray !" 

XXXI. 

Before her towers the scornful majesty 

Of dame Sighieri ; — whose too-marble brow 

Smites chilly down upon the glazing eye 
Of terrified Salvestra ; changing now 
Her blood to ice, that it no more might flow ; 

Her heart and veins to stone, that they might move 
not : — 
Which having done, the Lady turns to go — 

How wretched they who love where friends approve not! 

Yet far more wretched they, who are not loved and 
love not ! 



116 SALVESTRA. [CANTO I. 



When that proud angry form had left her thus, 
Thought and emotion to Salvestra came ; 

At first in indistinct and nebulous 

Perplexity ; then through the mist and flame, 
Light, and a flood, rushed resonant through her 
frame, 

iVnd life seemed recreated in her soul, 

Strength in her limbs, and feeling of the same ; 

Again she conscious was of self-control, 

Beheld the sun in heaven, and heard the Arno roll. 



Yet not upon the Arno stood she gazing, 

But homeward looked ; and, listlessly as 'twere, 

Endured the noon-day heat now downward blazing^ 
And, with slow steps, — (as if a wanderer, 
Who, though in Florence, had no business there, 

And scarcely cared where she might lodge at night ; — 
Fugitive as a leaf divorced and sere ;) — 

Tow'rds the domestic threshold, went forthright, 

By instinct only led, bereft of purpose quite. 



SALVESTRA. 1 ! 7 



With prouder step, and head more lofty held, 

Lady Sighieri sought her palace-home ; 
No natural feeling in her heart rebelled 

'Gainst the decision whereto she had come. 

Of lovers true she had pronounced the doom 
Without compunction, deeming it her duty ; 

And shared not in the misery and gloom, 
Which — like a passing chimney urchin sooty — 
She had inflicted thus on Innocence and Beauty. 



And like the aspiring sweep she victim was, 

Although she knew it not ; a thing for pity 
And admonition ; — black, how black, alas ! 

Though very comely ! — Florence ! Merchant City ! 

By Mammon ridden ! many a soul-deep ditty 
Might be sung o'er thee, of such desperation 

As would the damned number 'mong the witty : 
Thus oft at gibbet, block, or engine-station, 
The doomed in jest abound, heroic elevation. 



118 SALVESTRA. [CANTO I. 



Perhaps, they are martyrs, and "more sinned against 
Than sinning;" wronged, and but wrong-doers 
thence. 

O, artist Blake ! compassion still thou deign' st, 
In thy most deathless " Songs of Innocence," 
To all such outcasts, whatso their offence, 

Pauper or orphan, clod or climbing boy, 
Negro or gaol-bird, with a love intense ! 

To Mammon's slave, though thus she kill young joy, 

We'd show like mercy now ; reform, but not destroy. 

XXXVII. 

"When as she paced her princely chamber through, 

Thus spake the Lady in her pride of soul — 
' ' What is there Wealth has not the power to do ? 

W^hat mar not 1 make not? 'stablish and control ? 

Impossibility 1 a braying foal, 
Impoverished from its birth ! — ignored by those 

Who wear the crown, ere running for the goal ! 
Riches dare all things, shielded well from woes, 
Severing or joining hearts, with only fools for foes !" 



CANTO I.] SALVESTRA. 119 



Think, Lady ! ere thou believest in the creed, 
The Wealthiest are the Happiest ! Anciently, 

Croesus so thought — and suffered. Take thou heed! 
Heaven will resent the odious blasphemy, 
And in thy only son may punish thee ! — 

— Meantime, Salvestra on her humble bed, 

Lay herself down, resigned to Heaven's decree ; 

But, ere she slept, these thoughts ran in her head, 

Nor would therefrom be chased, though some of them 
were dread. 



" Methinks, he might have said farewell to me ; 

Methinks, he should have said it ! 'Twas unkind 
To snap all ties so mutely, suddenly ! 

Why, mere acquaintance they more strictly bind ! 

Strangers observe more courtesy ! . . . 0, blind ! 
'Twas to rebuke Ambition, that would think 

That I to him could be at all affined — 
I was his schoolfellow ? — that is a link ! 
His playmate too ? Another ! Wherefore should I 
shrink ? 



120 SALVESTRA. [CANTO I. 



" I was, at all events, his fellow-creature ! 

Or, horrid thought ! are rich and poor two races 1 
Different in kind, albeit alike in feature ? 

Such angels are and men ; though angel faces 

Some of the latter boast, and heavenly graces, 
Like my Girolamo ! If so, 'twere sin, 

"Women should love them when in such high places : 
Such guilt in former times, they say, hath been, 
As by the Mystery shown, performed our chapel in, 



" Last Christmas-tide. I recollect it well ; 

The Angels and the Women whom they loved ; 
And both were drowned within the Flood that fell 

For their fault on the world ! If this be proved ; 

It may be, by the Tempter I have been moved 
To love unlawful, in my strong regard 

For dear Girolamo, and it behoved 
From further sinning we should be debarr'd — 
So best to part at once, though so to part is hard ! 



CANTO I.] SALVESTRA. 121 



XL1I. 

"I've had bright dreams, but dreams must fade at 
morn: 

Yet these were not of night that I have dreamt ; 
And therefore 'tis, they've left me more forlorn. 

Nor have I been from wicked pride exempt ; 

But worn my hair, I fear, too vainly kempt ! 

! towards my friends and neighbours, now I see, 
A haughty bearing 'twould too often tempt : 

And one good youth who truly loved me, 
How many times I've scorned — now scorned myself 
by thee, 

XLIII. 

" Girolamo ! But hush ! his name no more ! 
Henceforth, I will not breathe it ! In my heart, 

It shall be buried ; shrined ; for I'll adore 
His memory, but in silence. 'Tis an art 
I'll teach myself, and learn to play the part 

1 should from childhood until now have played, 
Whether at home or school, at church or mart, 

Or by the Arno's side, a humble maid, 
By emulous desire had I not been betrayed. 



122 SALVESTRA. [CANTO I. 



" I will confess my sin, and, being absolved, 
Will walk more humbly both with God and man. 

Ah me ! what grief ambition has involved ! 

My pillow's wet with tears ! I must — I can — 
Suppress this insane passion — will ! The span 

Of life that's left to me — for though I'm young, 
I feel there has been spoke on it a ban 

That shortens its continuance — would be flung 

Away on passion now — the knell of it is rung ! 



" Ave Maria ! I will murmur thus 
The pious strain, and, by monotony 

Of repetition, influence slumberous 

Win to my weary lids, now stiff, and dry, 
Exhausted of their moisture ! — patiently, 

Dispose myself to sleep, and pray to feel 
The sense of pardon for my cruelty 

To those I have offended — and thus seal 

My peace — So may my visions paradise reveal ! 



CANTO I.] SALVESTRA. 123 



" Yes ! I may dream of Angels who defend 
Those whom they love, and love as angels should, 

Each less than lover, yet far more than friend ; 
Who, being themselves so innocent and good, 
Make us not less so in their fondest mood ; 

But rather elevate us to their sphere, 

Than stoop themselves to that where once we stood. 

Methinks, my spirit is already there — 

Sleep ! what a heaven art thou to penitence sincere !" 



Such were Salvestra's thoughts, when soft repose 
Glid to her pillow, and hushed up her sense, 

Benignantly. More happy than she knows, 
The Maiden, in her shut intelligence, 
Dreamed of the Cross, and of its shame intense, 

A willing Martyr, suffering its anguish ; 
Then rescue came ; Divine Benevolence, 

Just as stern resolution 'gan to languish, 

Bearing her — crowned — away ; and said, " The Saints 
thus vanquish ! " 



124 SALVESTRA. [CANTO I. 



And then she dreamed that she was canonized, 
And sate in glory with the Virgin Mother, 

Gorgeously garmented, and idolized 

Even by each wreathed and angelic brother, 
Who, gazing on her, saw not one another, 

And tended her their harps to do her honour ; 
Singing her praises as they sang no other, 

Since of high argument she was the donor : — 

For light that she had shed, such light was shed 
upon her, 



And therefore 'tis that Poets, whose minds are 
O'er-influenced by Angelic ministry, 

Story Salvestra's wrongs, and near and far 
Extend her fame on earth, as in the sky 
'Tis sung before the Heaven's consistory. 

In act extern she bore no sign of woe, 
But hid it all in her heart's secresy, 

For she had " that within which passeth show," 

Sorrow and suffering, whereof th' Angels only know. 












CANTO I.] SALVESTRA. 125 



She slept till Dawn, thus dreaming ; when the shrill 
Alarum sounded of brisk Chanticleer. 

— Earlier than was her wont, yet with goodwill, 
She rose, and saw the Sun first faintly peer, 
Gilding the East, ere all the Hemisphere, 

As making modest effort, ere, sublime, 

He shed at noon his brilliance everywhere. 

Thus greatest things commence from small. Even 
Time 

Grows by degrees ; so Virtue ; and alas ! so Crime ! 



Love also at the first is but a germ, 

A little seed which, buried in the heart, 

Grows into stem and flower, (if no hid worm 
Consume the tender bud,) with silent art, 
Till, like life's coronal, it shines apart, 

Between the sun and earth, a glorious thing, 
An anchored vessel, waiting for its chart, 

A bird footbound, and of imperfect wing, 

A bright peninsula, in mid air fluttering. 



126 SALVESTRA. [CANTO I. 

LII. 

Such with Salvestra had it been ; and, now, 

Must be again : a germ so small and fine, 
As pity for the suffering, may grow 

To love ; and human mercy to divine. 

Hence, scorned suitor ! for that wound of thine, 
There's healing in her penitential sighs : — 

Take courage, Paolo ! by this verse of mine, 
I swear, her heart with thine shall sympathize : — 
It doth! — They've met! — What smiles, with tears, 
are in her eyes ! 

LIII. 

Nor slow was he, to mark the iris there ; 

Nor, haply, ignorant of the cause of change ; 
But if she pitied him, he pitied her ; 

And soon their conscious souls, no longer strange, 

Of mutual being through the scope and range, 
"Were in each other well and deeply read : 

And Love of both had, soon, his sweet revenge ; 
Nor Hymen quenched his arrows when they wed, 
But, with his nuptial torch, relumined them instead. 

END OF CANTO I. 



SALVESTRA. 



Canto BE. 



SALVESTRA, 



a &ale of Soccaccfo. 



CANTO II. 



Paris ! the city of the gay and free ! 

Fashion's metropolis ! and Reason's mart ! 
The focal lens of contrariety ! 

Hearts without love, and loves without the heart. - 

Where courtesy has grown so much an art, 
That manners make the man, not he makes them. 

Forming of him the whole, and not a part, 
His substance, not the accidents, — that gem 
Desert or rank, — the head, and not the diadem. 



130 SALVESTRA. [CANTO II. 



Manners — not morals — but their substitute, 

The grave and frivolous, the false and vain, 
Confound in one solution dissolute, 

And make a mere alembic of the brain. 

Shades of the brave that haunt the banks of Seine ! 
Once more to your degenerate race appear, 

Return ye to the well-remembered plain ; 
The ancient frankness, daring, witness here, 
Now poorly, dimly, shown, in shrug, grimace, and 



With too much independence, to be free ; 

And, for true valour, too much levity ; 
Each son of France pursues his proper glee, 

And greets the passing follies as they fly. 

To nought but his own mood in slavery, 
By that subdued to lust and indolence — 

strongest, though unsceptred tyranny ! 
The slave of whim, and passion, and pretence, 
Not fearing to offend, impatient of offence. 



CANTO II.] SALVESTRA. 131 



Well for Girolamo, the simple youth 
Was more astonished than delighted by 

The scenes he travelled through ; and much, in sooth, 
He could not understand: — Thoughts thatwerehigh 
With Deeds so low, and native of the sty, 

Repeated Circe's magic, and made Vice 
Seem beautiful at first as Vanity 

Would have it look, so delicate, so nice ; 

Though doomed to feed on husks, when next were 
thrown the dice. 

v. 

The language soon he learned to speak with ease : 

The vocal organs in the young adapt 
Themselves with readiness to what they please. 

Girolamo found his were but too apt ; 

But not the more for that the links were snapt 
Which to the "Langue d'Oc" chained his charmed 
sense, 

The blithe Provencal poets, who were rapt 
To feeling's summit, and the " gaye science" 
Taught to the heart, as if it needed teaching thence, 



132 SALVESTRA. [CANTO II. 



May joy the Troubadour still hover by — 

Poet of Love, a blessing on his tongue ! 
Though the Trouvere, the bard of Chivalry, 

With his "Langue d'O'il," stilled his softer song ; 

Convincing by the reason of the strong ; 
Mailed in cuirass, and weaponed with the sword ; 

Chanting of battle, — strain both loud and long, 
Witty, satiric, lewd, — victorious lord ; 
Till France his language learned, and spoke it word 
for word. 

VII. 

Girolamo read much ; chanson, romance, 
Fable, chronique ; neglecting not meanwhile 

Severer lore, wherever found, perchance 
Brunetto's "Petit Tresor" or Joinville — 
(Not he — vain prince ! — who threatens Britain's 
Isle 

With craft piratic erelong to invade, 

And waked with fatuate fondness Europe's smile, 

While his loud boasts unearthly rumbling made — 

Like Dr. Kitto's voice in Burlington Arcade."! — 



CANTO II.] SALVESTRA. 133 



Or Villehardouin, or Froissart — and, at times, 

His spirit fed upon trie delices 
Of Alain Chartier, for whose honey rhymes 

A princess kissed him in a royal way, 

Sleeping in palace hall, at noon of day. 
Such stories to thy heart, Girolamo ! 

Went with conviction, shed therein a ray 
That warmed and kindled a desire to know, 
And thy Instructor taxed such learning to outgo. 



This Tutor was a Priest, a well-taught man, 

The wittiest man in Paris, and the gayest — 
'Twas very well the way that they began ; 

But what art thou, Man ! with Love that 
playest ? 

The Urchin's gaining strength while thou delayest. 
These studies are too virtuous ; or, at best, 

But stimulate remembrance : — right, thou sayest ; 
Thought on one object suffered thus to rest, 
Needs others for the eye to drive it from the breast, 



134 SALVESTRA. [CANTO II. 



Thus reasoned Pere Lebrun — (so name the Priest) — 
And with his Order's cunning 'gan to act ; 

Talked with his pupil of the mental feast 
That observation brings ; proposed a pact 
That they should quit their books, and study fact 

Abroad in good society, and see 

Whate'er was notable, and gain the tact 

Which makes life's intercourse work easily, 

Wins ladies' hearts, and gives more freedom to the 
free. 



" You have no notion yet what woman is :" 

Thus he pursued. — " Forget that Florence chit ; 
Regard Parisian beauty, and learn bliss 

By simply gazing, and, by hearing, wit. 

What grace of form ! discourse, how exquisite ! 
Her shape entrances, how her eyes allure ! 

What fascination on her brow is writ ! 
Her motion music, starry, cynosure ; 
La Femme toute comme il faut — chef-d'oeuvre de la 
Nature ! 



CANTO II.] SALVESTRA. 135 



" Would you a guardian angel ? She is one ! 

Whose far-off steps rejoice the listening soul — 
She thine Aurora is, and thou the Sun ! 

A joy that more enchants than Hebe's bowl ! 

A dearer prize than crowns the racer's goal ! 
Woman, dear woman, whom, when Nature formed 

She let her work creative power control, 
Ceasing invention, and to worship warmed ; 
In wonder and despair, the while old Chaos stormed. 



" Time is that I should show the world to thee, 
And her who sways it with small pearly hand, 

Soft as the cygnet's down, and such to see, 
Subtly contrived, and delicately bland 
Of gesture, that it speaks in mute command, 

Bowing the wealth of all things to her will ; 
Nor pride its simplest wafture may withstand : 

The while her tresses, with a special skill, 

As in a golden web, take valour captive still. 



136 SALVESTRA. [CANTO II. 



" Let us go forth, and dare her witcheries ; 

The enchantress loves to haunt in public places, 
The Luxembourg, the Louvre, the Tuilleries, 

The Champs Elysees ; all these share her graces : 

Nay, even the churches have their pretty faces ; 
Old Notre Dame, St. Roche, St. Genevieve, 

St. Sulpice and St. Eustace, boast rich traces 
Of that great beauty which once fell in Eve, 
And yet makes sin so fair, as might those saints de- 



" But, most of all, there where the Boulevards wind, 
The shady avenues our preference court ; 

' Mid groves of elms, with various buildings lined, 
With art and nature both we may disport : 
There sate your needs, or gratify jour forte — 

Cafe, hotel, and shop, and theatre, 

Are yours to choose, and splendid the resort. 

"What festive groups, and girls of skin so clear 

You see the red wine through, that they are quaffing 
there !" 



CANTO II.] SALVESTRA. 137 



Thus spake Lebrun, nor waited answer, but 
His pupil speeded forth ; from place to place, 

Conveyed him, or on foot or chariot, 

Till evening came ; then, as a crowning grace, 
Would introduce him to a friendly face, 

Or two, or three ; nay, would not be denied ; 
Street after street he traversed, with swift space, 

Well known, it seemed, in each, nor undescried ; 

Fair dame from lattice, still, looked, nodded, smiled, 
or sighed. — 



The blushes of the morn their cheeks suffuse, 
The bloom of young desire, the purple light ; 

The splendour of the sun their eyes abuse, 
And with too sudden stroke the senses smite, 
And all too much the nerves and pulse excite. 

Now paused the priest, and knocking at the door, 
Entered within : — both welcomed with delight 

A bevy of bright ladies, three or four, 

Gay, charming, complaisant : — See Little, or Tom 
Moore. 



138 SALVESTRA. [CANTO II. 



Perplexed sensation made Girolamo 

Awkward and stupid at the unwonted scene ; 
He felt his blood, too, run, or fast or slow 

He knew not which, and asked what it might mean. 

Cake, sweetmeat, wine, and talk now intervene, 
Each fair to either for his Hebe rushes, 

Proffering with grace the glass each pause between : 
Till one more free all ceremony crushes, 
In the youth's lap plombs down — kissing him till he 
blushes. 



The sudden action seized Girolamo 

With wonder, and then shame, yet no disgust : 
He'd feasted too that day, and felt a glow 

Within his veins — 'twas fe^er and not lust ! 

He wanted but a period to adjust 
His startled sense, and know his situation — 

Then seemed to peer upon him, first, the bust, 
And then the full length form, for his salvation, 
Of her he truly loved — her of his town and nation. 



CANTO II.] SALVESTRA. 139 



It was Salvestra ! shaped by Mind on Air — 
Her more than wraith, her image in his heart ! 

'Twas she ! he saw her chaste, as well as fair ! 
And from the meretricious, with a start, 
Sprang up, indignant ! He had not the art 

Of speechifying, so he nothing said, 

But slow, with scorn, made ready to depart, 

And left the room, the house ; nor turned his head, 

Though laughter him pursued — it had for him no 
dread ! 



What of Lebrun ? Sin was to him no shame ! 

He could absolve whate'er was done amiss — 
Conscience for him had no reproof or blame ; 

His scheme had failed : he felt annoyed at this, 

But nothing further ; — compensating bliss 
He found in what remained. What he began, 

He finished as of course, nor feared the hiss 
Of censure. Why? The Office saves the Man, 
And others too with him, whom he can bless or ban. 



140 SALVESTRA. [CANTO II. 



Adieu to Paris ! — Hail, Florence, hail ; 

Beautiful on the mountains are the feet 
Of faithful Love ! Rejoice, hill and dale ! 

From a peak of the Appennines, 'tis sweet 

To look on Florence ! How the heart doth beat 
In the touched bosom of Girolamo ! 

Val d' Arno ! never yet did he so greet 
Thee and the city there that sleeps below, 
Within thine arms embraced, and coloured in the 
glow 



Of an Italian sunset. There, behold, 

Gorgeously tinted, the Duomo loom ; 
The Campanile, in a mist of gold, 

And the tall tower of Vecchio, in soft gloom, 

Stand forth, as if to challenge height and room, 
'Midst palaces and temples, and the crowd 

Of dwellings, in distinct and lofty doom, 
Braving the elements with gesture proud, 
Far glittering in the light, unshadowed with a cloud. 



CANTO II.] SALVESTRA. 141 



Around there spreads an amphitheatre 

Of hills, clad with the olive and the vine ; 
And pleasant villas here and there appear, 

The recreation of the Florentine, 

Of leisure and of wealth the pledge and sign — 
But now for these the Youth had small regard, 

The city there below contained the shrine 
At which his heart adored — that shrine, how marred ! 
O sure that heart must break, though it as rock were 
hard! 



He has descended now into the town ; — 

Shall he straight seek Salvestra ? Well it were, 

First from his Mother her resolve were known : 
Haply, she has relented ; eased of fear, 
More welcome he to her, for whom so dear 

He had trod so late upon the Tempter's crest, 
And. wore a wreath he should be proud to wear — 

Their meeting thus would, sure, be doubly blest, 

No doubt to cloud his faith, none on her hopes to res*\ 



142 SALVESTRA. [CANTO II. 



Lady Sighieri sat in palace chamber, 

Rejoicing in her state : her heart was proud : 

The spoiled of fortune, she in thought would clamber 
Into Jove's seat, and speak from thunder cloud, 
" I will, and it is done !" — while Nature bowed 

Obedient to her fiat, and her laws 

The slaves of Mammon, with the heart, allowed. 

She smiles superior, with a scorn that awes 

More than the darkest wrath, and wantons with the 



While musing thus, a step alarmed her ear, 

And soon a shape her eye — which, blinding, gazed 

Upon Girolamo, — returned, — and there, — 
A presence unannounced. Not unamazed, 
She looked, I say, on him, till sight was dazed ; 

With rigid cataleptic attitude, 

Which few ape well, — as if becoming crazed, — 

(Of actresses I know of none who could, 

Unless the Cushman might — and much I wish she 
would.) 



CANTO II.] SALVESTRA. 143 



At length, she 'gan to tremble — as her mind 

Grew with suggestion ; — Some strange horror trained 
That sudden apparition : She will find 

A word — though he cannot — " Thou !" — He re- 
mained 

Still silent. " Speak ! By what art thou restrained ? 
Thou hast returned, though sudden, not too soon ! 

Florence is now as Paris ! She who feigned 
Affection for thee, to another wed, 
Leaves thee to better choice — no more is now to 
dread !" 

XXIX. 

He shrieked not — sank not. He had heard before, 

Entering the hall, the tidings, and had come 
To front his desolator ; — but once more 

To see her, ere for aye he left his home ; 

Abroad in the world's wilderness to roam, 
A wanderer, without country, without name ; 

And misanthropic as an alien gnome, 
Whose task is not on earth, but 'neath the same ; — 
Loathing the daylight's glare, the grave his only aim ! 



144 SALVESTRA. [CANTO II. 



" No more to dread !" Her words repeating so, 
He calmly answered. " Dread — for thee, or me ? 

Perhaps, no more for either ! All of wo 
That I can suffer I have borne from thee — 
Henceforth, from such my soul at once is free. 

But this of thine endures for ever there ; 
A doom — no fugitive calamity — 

A curse that clings to me, because thy heir, 

The destiny of wealth that dazzles but to sere. 



" Has no dream been with thee, thy soul to warn 
Of mischief that would make the morning pale ? 

No vision of the night, that with life's yarn 
Would blend in darkness ; and lift up the veil, 
That shrouds the future with its bliss and bale ? 

Or are to thee all oracles but lies, 

And thou with impious blindness doomed to sail, 

Against fate's tide, until the billows rise 

To whelm the scoffer then, who mocks at phantasies ? 



CANTO II.] SALVESTRA. 145 

XXXII. 

"See'stthounot now the threatening phantoms throng 
About thy shrinking form ; sedate and slow, 

Pointing their victim, as they come along, 
With beckoning gesture, thee encircling so, 
Till the weird coil leaves thee no space to go ? 

Anon, thou art their prisoner ! Fare thee well ! 
Thou gavest me life, and thou hast ta'en it now ! 

I murmur not. Hear'st thou not yet the knell? 

We meet on earth no more — elsewhere, in Heaven, 
or Hell!"— 

XXXIII. 

He vanished — left her to her solitude — 

The wealthy mother, thus unsonned. Perchance? 
'Twas but his passion spake so wild and rude, 

Though strangely dumb it smote her! Youth's 
romance — 

Give it free way! 'twill waken from its trance ! 
The girl was married — all on that side sure ; 

The rest was lunacy — a frantic dance, 
Of which he soon must tire — and time would cure 
Whate'er was else amiss, and to new paths allure. 

L 



146 SALVESTRA. [CANTO II. 



Thus reasoned she, recovering thus her joy ; 

But she misreckoned ; knew not of the heart : 
Nor e'er suspected she had broke the toy, 

By her rude handling. Ignorant thou art, 

Lady Sighieri ! of Love's course and chart, 
And blind as Cupid's self to Love's intents — 

Slave of convention ! victim of the mart ! 
Divested of those generous sentiments, 
Native to woman's breast — which lost, she ne'er 
repents 



Of any wrong she suffers or inflicts. 

We fallow now Girolamo once more : — 
Passion prescribes what custom interdicts — 

Shall he quit Florence, native town, before 

Adieus are said, where he would still adore ? 
He must — will see Salvestra, though so late — 

What makes the night-air burn so shivering frore? 
The heart commands, with instinct sure as fate — 
What, though she cannot love, she will compassionate. 



CANTO II.] SALVESTRA. 147 i 

XXXVI. 

Alas ; Girolamo ! there is scarce life 

Within thy heart to bear thee to her door — 

How trembles he with that internal strife, 
As with the cold of winter do the poor — 
Florence to him is but a barren moor, 

All but that threshhold he now standeth by ; 
Nor marvel if the latch be insecure, 

Not much skill needs that humble lock to try, 

Which soon yields to the force, he used he knew not 
why. 



Cautiously now he treads the house within, 

Nor finds it hard its secrets to discover — 
jBut had it a Dedalian labyrinth been, 

What labyrinth is safe against a lover ? 

Now, all ye guardian Angels that watch over 
The marriage bed of faithful hearts ! watch here ; 

Over Salvestra's pillow gently hover! — 
For who, with rolling eye and listening ear, 
Her bedside watches thus, in frenzy or in fear ? 



148 SALVESTRA. [CANTO II. 

XXXVIII. 

It is Girolamo ! He closer creeps — 

Stands mutely near the couch, thereon agaze, 
Where, by Salvestra's side, her husband sleeps. 

Sleeps she ? She does but seem. " Hist ; hist !" 
Amaze 

At once aroused her, from half-conscious haze 
Of deepening slumber, with a stifled shriek — 

"Hush!" softly said the Youth. The tone — the 
phrase — 
Admonished her — " Salvestra ! hear me speak ! 
I'm he, Girolamo ! — your lover ! — come to seek 

XXXIX. 

" Your pardon — not your heart — Paolo's now !" 
Salvestra heard, and trembled — but, constrained 

By strong emotion, syllabled a low 

And broken answer — " Leave me, yet unstained, 
In honour ! Is it well, that me disdained 

You thus should visit now ? There was a time 
We might have loved — 'tis passed — and but re- 
mained 

This outrage, to complete and crown thy crime, 

And make of me a scorn, and theme for ribald rhyme. 



CANTO II.] SALVESTRA. 149 



" There was a time we might have loved : — but now, 
You see my husband — him I love alone — 

He has my heart, and had my hand and vow ! 

Thank Heaven, he sleeps ! your visit all unknown 
At this untimely hour. At once, begone ! 

Were he to know't, I should indeed be lost ! 

What wretchedness were mine! What have you 
done? 

In selfish passion utterly engrost, 

Spread mischief unawares, and periled me the most. 



te And to that sleeping and unconscious man, 
You've not reflected on your bitter wrong ! 

You who have brought on my calm life a ban — 
He who has blessed it with a faithful, strong, 
Zealous, and virtuous love, that all along 

No purpose had but me, and, when obtained, 
Made me its idol, morn and matin song, 

Its wreath and garland, its sole triumph gained, 

Queen of his humble heaven, where I alone have 
reigned !" 



150 SALVESTRA. [CANTO II. 



She said : After Girolamo had heard 

Her to the end, all hope forsook him then — 

And, for some time, he could not utter word ; 
But sohbed and sighed, ere he might speak agen : 
At length, he cried, " Salvestra ! Think of when 

You thought not thus of me — those innocent days, 
When, if we thought, within the scope and ken 

Of our too simple minds, and narrow ways, 

Each other we but knew, of all the sun surveys. 



" To us, I think, there was no world beside — 

To me there is none other yet, besure ! 
To you there is — (0 haste to be a bride !) — 

A world as fair, and, ah ! far more secure ! 

How cold is all within me ! By my pure, 
And virgin love, my honour and my pride ! 

I mean no harm to thee ! If this endure, 
I cannot live ! Permit me, by thy side 
I may repose, till life renew its wonted tide !" 



CANTO II.] SALVESTRA. 151 



So urgently he pled ; so manifest 

His need of kindly warmth ; so wildly had 
Passion excited him and her opprest ; 

What could she do but yield ? She loved the lad ; 

Ay, and her heart for him was very sad, 
Although she feigned to have outgrown the feeling — 

To hear his madness almost made her mad ! 
So he lay down beside her, for the healing 
Of that strange feverous cold which through his veins 
was stealing. 

XLV. 

" I will not touch thee ! will not speak to thee !" 

And he lay quiet, while his troubled brain 
Revolved these thoughts : " No hope on earth for 
me ! 

No life but in her love ! There is no vein, 

Nor artery, within this corse of pain, 
Which, were it but a corse, 'twould feel no more, 

But with her love is cherished. Am I Cain, 
That thus I am an exile ? Heaven restore 
The days that have gone by, or cut off those before ! 



152 SALVESTRA. [CANTO II. 



" I know not when this fatal love began — 

It was, I think, born with me ; 'twas with me, 
A child, a boy, a youth — why not the man ? 

'Tis not to know myself, not to know thee ! 

To part — O God ! — to part, is not to be ! 
Can one exist with only half a heart ? 

In its cleft fountain, can vitality ? 
Lets it not forth the blood ? O God ! to part ! 
What meaneth it but death ? 'Tis best ! — cun- 
ning art ! 



" I have conceived it, in my inward soul ; — 

This silence is an oracle, and teaches 
What frantic noise omits. That pangless goal, 

That way is wisest which the soonest reaches ! 

There have been erst the violentest breaches 
Made in the house of life ; 'gainst which the priest 

(0 son of craft !) still sagely — rightly — preaches : — 
For without force the soul may be releast. — 
Why should he breathe who would not ? 'Tis but 
to have ceased I" — 



CANTO II.] SALVESTRA. 153 



Having thus thought, he made up a strong will, 
Ceasing to think, and willing once for ever — 

Then clenched his hands, and held his breath, until 
Their functions from all organs he might sever : — 
And, stifling feeling with the stern endeavour, 

Repressed all motions of his conscious frame, 
And fixed them in a trance, to waken never ; 

Firmly resolved, nor faltering in his aim, 

'Till o'er each passive sense a deepening slumber 
came. 



Meanwhile Salvestra waited with desire, 

And anxious mind, some sign of his removing: - 

At length, surprised, she ventured to enquire 
Why he went not ? In gentle terms reproving 
His want of caution, and his too much loving — 

" My husband soon will wake ! 'tis fit you go — 
If my dear honour still you are behoving ! 

Why speak you, stir you not ? Can it be so ? 

That sleep has kissed his lids in pity to his wo?" 



154 



SALVESTRA. 



[CANTO II. 



Then stretching forth her hand, she softly touched 
And shook him gently. " He is chill, indeed ! 

It was no feint to say so \" Then she clutched 
More freely, firmly — " Sir ! awake with speed !" 
But finding soon he gave to her no heed, 

She became wild with wonder and with dread, 
And shook him strongly. " O, is this thy meed 

For my compassion ? Ah ! his hands — his head — 

His cheeks are mortal cold ! Great Mercy ! he is 
dead !" 



END OF CANTO II. 



SALVESTRA. 



Canto SH. 



SALVESTRA, 



8 STale of Boccaccio. 



CANTO III. 



There are in Love distinctions national ; 

For Love the Frenchman seldom dares to die ; 
The Italian often : true, the Son of Gaul 

Will venture suicide from vanity, 

Which he misnames, and with the pageantry 
Of circumstance theatric decorates. 

A Frenchman die of love '! Bah ! Wilfully, 
He will parade his quarrel with the fates, 
And join, in social pact, a band of desperates. 



158 SALVESTRA. [CANTO III. 

II. 

Splenetic Egotist ! from vanity, 

For a blue riband in his button hole, 
He who had sworn he ever would be free, 

Surrendered to Napoleon, branch and bole, 

His rights, possessions — nay, his heart, his soul, 
His children's limbs and lives. If you neglect, 

He straight will praise himself; for 'tis the whole 
Of his existence to command respect, 
Careless even though for crime ; — no praise will he 
reject. 



The Englishman in love is most sincere, 
But little prone to suicide, though long 

Foul scandal has affirmed the lying sneer ; 
Ay, and albeit its " Purgatory" song, 
In British numbers, bold, sublime, and strong 

Has lately issued from an instrument 

Of no mean power, sounding as from a gong, 

Rude, passionate, abrupt, wild, violent ; 

Work of a genuine soul, though much on wrath mis- 
spent. 



CANTO III.] SALVESTRA. 159 



Something too much of this. Our story claims, 

Serious attention and a sober strain — 
As we approach the terminus, our aims 

Grow more decided, ere we leave the train. 

All travelling dreams now vanish from the brain. 
And the world's actual business 'gins to press 

On the awaked sensorium once again — 
Grave duty recommences ; tasks that bless, 
Or curse the doer — self-responsibilities ! 



Return we to Salvestra. When — (the tale 

Proceeds) — she found Girolamo was dead, 
Sorrow and terror made her weep and wail, 

With measureless remorse, although the dread 

Of Paolo, asleep on the same bed, 
Restrained much of the clamour of her grief, 

And hushed it, ere it got too much a-head, 
To quiet, muffling it, as 'twere a thief, 
That would her husband wrong, in murmurs low 
and brief. 



160 SALVESTRA. [CANTO III. 



Anon, she reasoned with herself; which done, 
She then her husband wakened ; wondering, he 

Drank in her words, like Labour's honest son, 
At ear and mouth, though in th' obscurity 
Of midnight, none his eager mien might see. 

With pardonable cunning, she commenced 
Telling the story — (fraudful piety !) 

As if it were another's, lest incensed 

His wrath might judgment slay — too suddenly con- 
densed. 



When he her prudent parable had tarried, 
Honest conviction spake in him agreeing. 

"I'd have," said he, "the corse in private carried, 
To the youth's home ; and for the woman, seeing 
That she was faultless, there should be no being 

Permitted to resentment." " Then," said she, 
"This must be done even now!" and so decreeing, 

She laid the hand of Paolo suddenly 

On the dead youth, whereat, much fearing, up rose he ; 



CANTO III.] SALVESTRA. 161 



His taper lit ;— and, calmly confident, 

The cold remains on his broad back disposed ; 

Nor felt reluctance, because innocent, 

To bear it forth abroad. The gate was closed 
Of the Sighieri palace ; there he loosed, 

And left the body. Little did it irk 

His conscience ; which, when pure, is never pozed — 

Like Humboldt's " Cosmos," quite a perfect work; — 

Or Mahomet's religion ; that is, for the Turk. 



Morning in Florence ! O'er the gorgeous city 
She doffs her silver veil, to contemplate 

The paradise that girds the palace Pitti, 
The valley and the hills that, in their state, 
Encincture all that is of younger date, 

With everlasting grandeur. Proudly shines, 
By thee, Italian Athens ! witnessed late 

The rising sun above thy Appennines, 

Whose lofty crests along Aurora's self reclines ; 



162 SALVESTRA. [CANTO III. 



While burst the soaring vapours, and dissolve 
Upon the pine-clad mountain-sides away, 

Until the vision from the cloud evolve, 
And thy metropolis salute the day, 
From midst the orange groves wherein she lay 

Slumbering while-ere. But all is life once more ; 
Health in the breeze, and pleasure in the ray, 

Music in the deep bell, the hum, the roar 

Of voices, and the waves that beat on Arno's shore. 



A sound of weeping in a palace-hall ! 

Sighieri ! never did I know 'till now, 
That thou wert beautiful. Great in thy fall, 

Pride may have leave to sit upon thy brow, 

As on its native throne ; . . a column, thou, 
Of most unquestionable majesty — 

A Niobe thy sorrows thee avow ; 
More than her children was thy son to thee, 
Thy one sole pledge of love, thy widow's legacy ! 



CANTO III.] SALVESTRA. 163 



Thou now art human, and I recognize 
Siddonian bearing in thy gait and mien; 

Formed in the mould of woman's goodliest size, 
And fitted to become a tragic scene — 
Not lightly now of thee I speak, or mean ; 

For trouble, gendered though of trespass, hath 
Crowned thee with glory, that shall grow serene, 

When penitence shall meet thee on thy path, 

And melt to tenderness thy maniac demon wrath. 



The sudden apparition of the corse 

At her own door might well appal and madden 
The humblest mother, with despair, remorse, 

And lust of vengeance. O ! her heart 'twill gladden, 

To know him murdered ; but, if not, 'twill sadden, 
For want of object to be wreaked upon ! 

No wound ? no bruise ? unsmitten ! not Abaddon, 
When punished for rebellion, lost and lone, 
More sure the blow was Heaven's — more ready to 
disown ! 



164 SALVESTRA. [CANTO III. 



But when she found that he had not been slain, 
Then she sate down beside his corse and wept : 

Tears, and then words, relieved her spirit's pain : 
" What fond delusion in my brain has slept, 
That still a dream of happiness has kept 

Alive, when the reality was dead, 
Or never had been born, to intercept 

The bloom of promise, early withered, 

And expectation mock with visionary dread ? 



" Ah ! visionary, look upon my boy ! 

There the stern truth ! Look there and dream no 
more 
Of pride, prosperity, or real joy ! 

Think not the world, experienced from of yore, 

Will bow its neck thy haughty step before ! 
Think not to heap up treasure to enrich 

What once upon the heart we dearly bore — 
To lift the child beyond the parents' pitch, 
That more he may mankind, with wealth and power 
bewitch ! 



CANTO III.] SALVESTRA. 165 



" All this is vanity; we may not bribe 
The vixen Fortune, and the bravo Death ! 

Try either, and they answer with a gibe — 
As well frown at the stars, or with thy breath 
Blow back the tempest ! Nothing is beneath, 

Nothing are we above. The rich, the poor, 
Are in the tomb distinguished by no wreath, 

There fade all flowers that garland king or boor 

All must put off their pomps who enter at that door ! 



" My son ! my son! Ambition dies with thee ! 

A throne has sunk beneath me with thy fall ! 
The sceptre of the wide world's empery 

Lies coffined with thee at thy funeral ! 

A monarch's form is covered with thy pall, 
The kingliest and the last of all the race, 

That held the subject earth in willing thrall ! 
Ancient dominion totters to its base, 
While pauper hospitals our palaces replace ! 



166 SALVESTRA. [CANTO III. 



" Perhaps, it is Heaven's will it so should be ! 

Since thou, the paragon of youths, art dead : 
Nature should mourn her lost regality ; 

Art's tallest tower crouch his imperial head, 

From midst dim ether thunder-shadowed, 
In fear and trembling ; till the Wrath pass by, 

Whereof old prophecy had trumpeted, 
As if of doom the sun himself should die, 
And Time pass glorified into eternity." 



While thus Sighieri raved in queenly wise, 

Humble Salvestra, 'mong the mourners came, 
Bid by her husband, — veiled and in disguise, 

To learn if rumour fixed on either blame ; 

While Paolo elsewhere essayed the same : 
Whereby they found themselves suspicion-free. 

Then in Salvestra' s breast revived the flame 
Of old affection : and straight hastened she 
Where lay the corse in Church, chief mourner there, 
to be. 



CANTO III.] SALVESTRA. 167 



There, 'neath the sacred roof, upon his hier 
Reposed the noble Youth, and, it around, 

His Mother, Friends and Relatives wept there ; 
Lamenting him, while yet above the ground, 
With ceremonial rites, with grief profound, 

With solemn state, with pomp processional 
Of crucifix and taper, and the sound 

Of chaunted psalmody ; while, amidst all, 

A Penitential Dirge was sung by great and small. - 



THE DIRGE. 
1. 

Who dare say, God is proud ? 

What, then ! Can Pride be human 
In Man 1 and fair in Woman ? 
O, how looks it in a shroud ? 

Chap-fallen! Ah! why? 
Of the dust, for it is spread, 
In the grave, an humble bed — 
Where it must lie ! 



168 SALVESTRA. [CANTO III. 

2. 

Weep ye ? 0, turn aside 
In shame, ye melancholy, 
Ye wanton sons of Folly ! 
Pride ! repent thee of thy pride ! 

Chap-fallen ! Ah ! why ? 
Look, where Death's pale mask, a-grin, 
Laughs at mortals, while they sin — 
There they must he ! 



Thus ran the Dirge. Sighieri felt it drear. 

They say, in part, 'twas written by herself: 
It might be so. I know not if it were — 

At all events, it indicates the shelf 

Whereon her hopes were wrecked — as if of delf 
Some people might be made, and some of china ; 

But on this point of Jems ask — or Jelf — 
To whom a soul at Mecca or Medina, 
Is quite as good as one that worships Rome's 
Regina. 



CANTO III.] SALVESTRA. 169 



But on all mountains men shall worship God ; 

In every heart His image traced may be : 
All are His offspring who, without a nod, 

Created and commands the things we see, 

And those we cannot. Let us, then, agree 
To love each other, as our flesh and bone ; 

Since the same Father, the same Deity, 
Has made all nations of one blood alone — 
Thus from Sighieri's fault the Church may learn her 
own. 



O wondrous power of Love ! To see it shown, 

We to Salvestra turn ; — who veiled stood, 
'Mid that assembly, as if there, alone, 

Among the crowd, she was in solitude. 

The sound of that strange hymn came on her mood, 
To fret, tease, vex, provoke, exasperate, 

Excite, inflame, and anger brain and blood ; 
But the strong passion she would yet abate, 
And still at distance stood, and kept her veiled state. 



170 SALVESTRA. [CANTO III. 



The strain has ended — that weird, strain — and still 

Her spirit had its agony repressed ; 
But, at its ceasing, with a sudden thrill, 

A tide of feeling gushed into her breast. 

— She must approach the cradle of his rest ; 
His, who was once — still is — so dearly loved ! 

And, through the pressure, like a swan's white 
crest, 
Midst heaving waves, she gently — slowly — moved ; 
Seen or unseen, by some ; approved or not approved. 



She reached the bier, and stood reflectively, 

A little while ; but nought essayed to speak ; 
Then, from the countenance of the Dead put by 

What covered it, and saw his face. A shriek ! 

Like a geir-eagle's from an eyrie peak, 
Shrill, and prolonged, and climbing to the sky, 

Where late, ere wounded in the archer's freak, 
Its wing soared upward : — O, how weariedly . 
That aspiration vain pierces the air on high ! 



CANTO III.] SALVESTRA. 171 



Such was the shriek Salvestra uttered — 
And, — having of that terrible cry relieved 

Her labouring bosom, — fell upon the dead, 
Prostrate ; and yet, as if she little grieved, 
But few tears shed ; and none a sob perceived. 

That one wild shriek bore all her grief away, 
And of her life bereaved the love-bereaved ! 

So, mute and moveless, on that corse she lay; 

While wondering gazed the crowd — but wist not she 
was clay. 



Anon the women gathered her around, 

(Who she might be, as yet, they had no notion,) — 
To comfort her, and raise her from the ground ; 

Admiring much her personal devotion, 

Misdeeming she had swooned of strange emotion : 
" Lady! whoe'er thou art, arise I" they said. 

— She stirred not — spake not — shrunk not from 
the erosion 
Of sound or touch : — the dying on the dead 
Fell when she fell — her heart its death shriek uttered ! 



1/2 SALVESTRA. [CANTO III. 



She stirs not — speaks not — breathes not ! Give her air — 

Her veil removed, they recognize her face — 
It is Salvestra's ! — pale, yet passing fair ; 

Calmer than when in life, with more of grace. 

The Sculptor's now, alone, there finds a place ; 
That serene beauty which one master only 

Gives to his works, and which in all we trace, 
Though, scorned by him, they broken round his 

throne lye ; 
Severest of severe — sceptred, and crowned, and lonely! 



A double pity now inspired the soul 

Of all beholders, who, with louder sorrow, 

Lamented the departed ; both the goal 

Of happiness had won : — to-day, to-morrow, 
From other's will they no permission borrow, 

How they shall bless, or how they shall be blessed — 
Henceforth unswayed, with love entire and thoro', 

Through fields of peace they wander or they rest, 

No tyranny to awe, no terrors to molest. 



CANTO III.] SALVESTRA. 173 



Meanwhile, was Paolo not unaware 

Of what had happened : anguish smote his breast ; 
By which surprised, he, without craft or care, 

The facts of the preceding night confessed. 

Sighieri heard . . . impatient and unblessed, 
She raved, unmindful of the sacred walls : — 

Suspicion seemed confirmed ; a murdered guest 
Her son had been, victim of jealous thralls, 
And there the homicide . . . the sight that most 
appals. 



" At length, thou'rt come — the Avenger's sacrifice! 

I see thee then, at length — may look on thee ! 
By such as thou — more mean than Avarice — 

Are princely hopes foreshortened ? Answer me, 

Mother of God ! if thou hast sympathy 
For the unchilded ; let thine oracle 

Make clear his certain guilt, that all may see 
The same as I do, and for vengeance swell 
The loud and common cry, more and more terrible— 



174 SALVESTRA- [CANTO HI. 

XXXII. 

" Till he, convinced, even welcome punishment, 
To rid him of worse horror ! Down each aisle, 

Stalks my son's spectre ; every monument 
Glares with the grave fire, all the sacred pile, 
From column, niche and statue, — to heguile 

The heart of prudence, and make madness do 
The work of tardy, blinded Justice ; while 

The roof resounds with discords, and the hue 

Of every brow turns pale, to hear the hellish crew, 



" That here seek refuge, if yon murderer may, 

Nor will be exorcised, if he be not ! 
But, like destroying angels, will even slay 

The hypocrites that desecrate the spot, 

Though kneeling at the altar ; . . each a blot, 
Religion hates far more than sacrilege ! 

Away with him ! or share his cursed lot ! 
For Heaven will not be mocked, and let the edge 
Of Justice' sword fall hurtless, as if life were 
sedge — 



CANTO III.] SALVESTRA. 175 



" A worthless grass to be mowed down by any 
Wbo will — a scrannel pipe tbat may be fretted, 

Played idly on, and broken, by a zany ! 

And not Heaven's image most beloved and petted, 
Upon the tapestry of bis temple, netted 

By "Wisdom's bands, wbicb wboso rends insults 
His Maker, hath the holy mountain letted, 

With Titan arbalists, and far catapults, 

That would through man wound God — while Death 
alone exults !" 

XXXV. 

Thus raved Sighieri. Paolo before 

Her stood, resenting not, but with deep ruth, 
Pitying her woe ; and merely said once more, 

"I'm innocent, and I have told the truth ! 

As I have said, so chanced it all, in sooth- 
Touching my life, even take it, if you list, 

Blighted is now the promise of my youth — 
Salvestra dead, I shall be soon, I wist — 
I have no wish to live — I fain would be dismist !" 



176 SALVESTRA. [CANTO III. 



So meekly Paolo his sorrow bore, 
That all believed his words— each syllable : 

Moreover, the Physicians, who before 
Girolamo's body had examined well, 
Witnessed anew how that no force befell 

The noble youth, but of a broken heart 

That he had died. Whereat, as by a spell, 

Sighieri was confounded, and, apart, 

Stood, desperate of soul, and cherishing its smart. 



" Is none but Heaven to strike at? Marble Heaven, - 
Severe as this Cathedral roof by sound 

Unpierced ; my baffled voice is downward driven 
To echo amidst columns, from the ground, 
And from the caverned sides ; dull as profound ; 

Reverberation, not intelligence— 

In vain should I blaspheme — and the rebound 

But hurts the speaker with its vehemence ; 

The malison returns to stun the wrathful sense. 



CANTO III.] SALVESTRA. 177 

XXXVIII. 

" Since I am cursed, may I not curse agen ? 

Domestic despotism, parental wrong ! 
May I not curse these evils ? What ! if then, 

I curse myself? Have they not grown so strong, 

That round the roots of social life they throng, 
Clustering and strangling the majestic tree 1 

'Tis our own hearts the fatal coil prolong, 
By living crushed beneath it ! Set them free — 
Even though they break themselves in breaking 
tyranny ! 

XXXIX. 

" Fountain of wrong and wrath — of grief and death 
Of poisons that enmadden, ere they slay ! 

Be thou sealed up for ever ! O thou Sheathe 
Of venomed arrows — be thou put away, 
Nor found again 'till the dread Judgment-day ; 

So that no Bow may send abroad your malice ! 
Burned be the Bow on Love's own hearth, I say ! 

Meanwhile, accursed who dwell in cot or palace, 

That make their children drink of Power's unques- 
tioned chalice ! 



SALVESTRA. [CANTO III. 



" Now know I Mammon an usurper is, 

And hath no throne on earth by lawful right, 
The lord of misery, and not of bliss, 

Reigning by force and fraud, and not true might ; 

Blind spawn of Chaos, loving not the light, 
And making darkness in high places, where 

His airy power resides, 'midst clouds of night ; 
Crushing high feelings, hopes, afTections there, 
Thoughts and all pure desires, in folly and base fear ! 



" Now wooes my changed spirit great thoughts back, 

And drinks with rapture the returning tide ; 
Now the wide world, erst clad in solemn black, 

Wears light's own vestments — darkened late by 
Pride, 

That perished when the wronged and loving died. 
Approve, dear Saints ! my penitence approve ! 

"Where ye by your own love are deified — 
Then, having suffered, stoop ye from above, 
Taking me to your spheres, owning no God but 
Love !" 



CANTO III.] SALVESTRA. 179 



Thus having said, Sighieri knelt before 

The altar rails, fell prostrate then, nor stirred ; 
Attended forthwith by her Confessor, 

Who saw her grief, but answered not a word. 

— Meanwhile, the Mourners, after they had heard 
Salvestra's story, placed her on the bier 

Beside Girolamo, to be interred 
Together, in one grave ; that their sincere 
Affection, crossed in life, might yet in death appear. 



Thus, on one bed reposing as they lay, 

They took them up, to bear them to their grave, 

The priests and clergy singing all the way ; 

One leading with the Cross, whose sufferings save 
The sinking sinner from the mundane wave, 

By might of Him who walked upon the sea, 

And through his spirit makes the weakest brave ; 

Others, with lights and tapers, solemnly 

Rejoicing, as for those who'd gained a victory. 



180 SALVESTRA. [CANTO III. 



A triumph mixed with sorrow. After all, 

Come weepings, lamentations, sighs and tears ; 

Nature will mourn at every funeral, 

Though rapt devotion hymn of starry spheres, 
And lift our spirit to the height of theirs, 

Who, perfect made, hymn God before the Throne : 
Though music make a heaven to our ears, 

Still will the Heart fall earthward, sad, and prone 

To love what is beneath. Thus stoops Love, to atone. 



Yet, in the midst of all, are holy Prayers, 

That, like the Lark, soar upward from the ground, 

And make friends of the angels unawares, 
Singing as they ascend, as if, with sound, 
Entrance to win beyond the golden round, 

That arches in the space where planets are : 

And, at the end, when grief would most abound, 

The Organ with the Requiem peals afar, 

A Song of such Repose as star might sing to star. 



CANTO III.] SALVESTRA. 181 

THE REQUIEM. 
1. 
Who are the Dead ? Not they, 

Who rest in Paradise ; 
Who live in endless day, 

The Sabbath of the Skies— 
Not they ! not they ! 

2. 

Each ordered orb, in Heaven, 
Some crowned Saint controls : 

O Planetary Seven ! 

Sweet homes of happy souls — — 
In Heaven ! in Heaven ! 



Like them, may we live ! 

Though now we're dead in sin- 
If thou, O Lord ! forgive, 

Death shall our life begin — 
We live ! we live ! 



182 SALVESTRA. [CANTO III. 

XLVI. 

The Mass is said : the solemn rites are over : 

Sleep that fond Pair whom life had wronged — now 
righted ; — 

Death now nnites the Mistress and the Lover, 
And none shall sever whom he hath united ! 



Such are the Tales in which our youth delighted ; 
Nay, even in age, such tales delight us still ; 

For not, as yet, is Love in us so blighted, 
But of its Hippocrene we drink our fill, 
Reposing at the foot of Aon's haunted hill ! 



END OF LAST CANTO. 



NOTES 

TO THE 

ABBOT OF FLORENCE 

AND 

SALVESTRA. 



NOTES TO THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 



CANTO I. 

1. " If I had Percy chapel, I could well lick 

The fools, who by such priestly lies are driven." — St. 5. 

This divine is certainly a very remarkable man. I notice 
a portrait of him, with six fingers on his right hand ; and I am 
given to understand that his lower limbs are centipedal, and 
that out of charity to his numerous wants at his nether 
extremities, the female portion of his congregation are perpe- 
tually employed in working for him, a constant supply of new 
shoes and slippers. 

2. " A Papist — or High Churchman, is an ass !" — St. 11. 
The selection of subject is at once a test of the truly pro- 

testant feelings of the writer. It is needless to suggest that he 
means a sly hit at " the damnable figment of purgatory ;" the 
source of so much profit to the Romish priesthood. The 
doctrine has no scriptural warranty ; but it is amusing to read 
the pretensions to it in some papistical tractates ; which 
nevertheless, we must accept, under peril of perdition. For 
what says Bellarmine ? 

" Constanter iterum asserimus, dogma esse fidei Purga- 
torium, adeo ut, qui non credit Purgatorium esse, ad illud 
nunquam sit perventurus, sed in Gehenna sempiterno incendio 
cruciandus." Bellarm. de Purgat. lib. II. c. 15. torn. II. p. 
404, G. Colonise, 1628. 



186 NOTES TO THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 

Which, being interpreted, would thus run in plain English : — 

" We again positively assert that Purgatory is an article of 

the faith ; so much so, that he who does not believe that there 

is a Purgatory, will never arrive at it, but will be tortured with 

everlasting fire in hell." 

A pleasant jest, truly ; yet not quite so pleasant as that which 
we will, and should, as protestants, boldly and not profanely 
make of this absurd doctrine. What a protestant was Boc- 
caccio ! What a vein of profound irony underlies his appa- 
rently simple stories ! The origin of the notion is clear enough. 
Plato divided mankind into three classes, as capable of Elysium 
or of Tartarus, or of some third purgatorial state. Homer 
also in his Odyss. lib. xi. hints at a similar notion ; and makes 
Ulysses refer to it in his interview with Elpenor. The doctrine, 
in fact, is one of the concessions virtually made by Con- 
stantine to the genius of paganism ; though it was not until 
a. r>. 600, that it was promulged as an unquestionable, 
because it had been found to be the most profitable dogma of 
the Harlot Church. Purgatory, however, must not be con- 
founded with the true doctrine of a middle state, the place of 
separate spirits. For the valid ground of the distinction, the 
reader may consult Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, 
Clement of Alexandria, Bernard, Bede, Lactantius, Basil, 
Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophylact, Bel- 
larmine, Ward, Challoner, Alexander, and a thousand others, at 
his leisure : or he may save himself the trouble by reading 
Bp. Horsley's celebrated Sermon on the disputed text in St. 
Peter. It would not be quite so easy to point out an equally 
compendious exposition of another difficult text in relation to 
the same subject, 1 Cor. iii. 10 — 15. If the reader would 
desire, however, to judge for himself of the wonderful unani- 



NOTES TO THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 187 

mity of the early fathers, we would recommend him to con- 
sult on this point the following amusingly conflicting authorities : 
Clem. Alexand. Strom, lib. v. torn. ii. pp. 660. 683. Oxon. 
1715; Tertul. contra Marcion. lib. v. c. 6. p. 468, D, Paris. 
1664; Chrysos. Horn. ix. in 1 Cor. iii. torn. v. p. 93; Horn, 
lvi. de Poenit. torn. 1. p. 616, C. Paris, 1636 ; Greg. Dial. lib. 
iv. cap. 39, torn. ii. col. 441, Paris, 1705; August, in Ps. 
vi. torn. iv. p. 24, C. Paris, 1691 ; De Civit. Dei. lib. 
xxi. cap. 26. sec. 2 ; De Fide et Oper. cap. 16. sec. 27. torn. vi. 
col. 181; C. Enchirid. cap. 69, Paris, 1685; Origen, Horn. 
vi. in Exod. ; Horn. xvi. in Jerem. xv. 16, torn. iii. p. 221, 
Paris, 1740; Jerom. lib. ii. advers. Jovinian, torn. iv. Paris, 
1706; Theodoret, in 1 Cor. iii. 12, 13, torn. iii. p. 134, 
Paris, 1642; Theophylact, in 1 Cor. iii. 13, p. 186, Lond. 
1636 ; Bede in 1 Cor. iii. torn. vi. Oper. col. 373, Basil, 1563 ; 
Bernard, Serin, in 1 Cor. p. 411, Colonise, 1620 ; Ambrose in 
1 Cor. iii. 15, torn. ii. pt. ii. col. 122, Paris, 1690. To whom 
may be added, the commentator Estius, — in 1 Cor. iii. 10 — 15, 
p. 220, 399, Colon. 1631. 

3. " Sleek Fusbos, of that Sunday print — -The Examiner." 

St. 16. 

This worthy claims, I was told by a celebrated novelist, to 
be a lineal descendant of Oliver Cromwell, or Cardinal Wolsey, 
I forget which ! For my part I do not care whether he ever 
had an ancestor; he is a most amusing writer: witness his 
effusions in "Punch," under the signature of " Our Fat Con- 
tributor." He is likewise the reported author of " Vestiges of 
Creation," and " Chambers' Edinburgh Journal." He also 
writes the advertisements for the " Times," and, I suspect, the 



188 NOTES TO THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 

poetical puffs for Mechi and Moses: he is therefore one of the 
most versatile and popular authors of the day. 

4. " My sucking verses were like Talfourd's plays." — St. 19. 

I assume that the allusions in this and the immediately sub- 
sequent stanzas require no explanation. Such men as Ernest 
Jones, Archer Gurney, the Boy Jones, Charles Mackay, Prof. 
Wilson, Alf. Tennyson, Worsted Buckingham, Curry Norfolk, 
Bad Potato Peel, Michael Angelo- Quackery, George Stephens, 
Timothy Powell, Dismal Home, George Prince Regent Romance 
James, Robert Bell, Samuel Rogers, Lord Brougham, and 
Professor Whewell, are public property, and, accordingly, the 
public gets as much interest out of them — as it can. 

5. " Her husband's jealousy, which grew absurd." — St. 33. 
Jealousy is rather a comic than a tragic passion, and has been 

mostly treated as such by novelists and dramatists. To Shake- 
spear, however, it must have appeared differently ; witness his 
Leontes and Othello. Is it possible that our sweet Swan of 
Avon could have been himself a " jealous soul ?" Is it pos- 
sible that Mrs. Shakespear could have given him cause ? What 
say the psychological commentators to this ? Is not the vein 
worth working ? Anne Hathaway ! 

6. "An old divine once said." — St. 53. 
The witty South. 

7. " The Vestiges of old Creation."— St. 60. 
This book is an attempt to link together the fragments of 
scientific discovery into a consistent chain, or system. Where 



NOTES TO THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 189 

lacuncB occur, in the accepted authorities, the anonymous 
author supplies them with guesswork and obscure testimony. 
The result is absurd enough, but not more absurd than mere 
science appears to the rational mind when considered as 
divorced from philosophy. Yet how few are there who 
combine the principles of the one with the facts of the other ! 

8. " The Abbot swore it was a holy deed, 

And that her conscience never would repent ! 
But added, if it came to that conclusion, 
He'd ease her with a little absolution !" — St. 63. 
A great source of priestly profit, this same power of absolu- 
tion. I have before me a black catalogue of crimes, for which 
absolution may be had, together with the price charged for its 
granting. The " Tax Book of the Roman Chancery" has been 
compiled and published, bearing the imprimatur of Anthony 
Egane, 1674. It was reprinted by J. Edes, Great Knight 
Rider Street, 1825. The following was lately copied by a 
resident in Belgium from the Papal Tariff, which was published 
by authority in France in 1691, and is still in force ; a sort of 
debtor and creditor account between His Holiness and the 
delinquent worshipper. 



For absolution of the crime of apostasy 
Absolution and dispensation for bigamy 
For heresy .... 

Murder 

Being accessary to a murder 
Indulgences for seven years . 
Perpetual indulgences for a fraternity 



£ 

4 
1050 



12 
40 



190 NOTES TO THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 

£ 
Permission to read forbidden books . . 25 

Dispensation for simony .... 40 

Permission to eat flesh . . . . .65 
Dispensation for vows of chastity . . .15 
Declaration of nullity of a religious vow . 100 

The same, after ten years of profession . 200 

To these is added a variety of other charges, having refe- 
rence to the forging of wills, fratricide, seduction, rape, incest, 
perjury, infanticide, sacrilege, and sundry other enormities, for 
which absolution may be obtained at moderate prices. That 
the spirit of Romanism is the same at this time as it always 
was, let the late disgraceful affair of the Holy Coat of Treves 
testify. But by this infamous ruse Rome has lost Germany ! 
" I see, as from a tower, the end of all." 



CANTO II. 

9. " There's but one Bard I know — a worthy fellow — 
Who rhymes ax will, and that is Bard Sordello !" 

St. 22. 

I have rather taken a liberty with the truth in this : as 
I have not the honor of Mr. Browning's acquaintance. I once 
met him in the flesh, and was much pleased with his fine, 
earnest, manly conversation. As to his works they decidedly 
stamp Mm as the greatest Poet of the day, not even myself 
excepted ! A critic has denominated him the Son of Minerva, 
and the Euclid of the Poets : whatever may be said of his 
being an " obscure poet" he is certainly the finest Tragic 



NOTES TO THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 191 

Author of the day. There are no dramas of modern times 
equal to the " Return of the Druses," and " Colomhe's Birth- 
day." Mr. Home, in Ms " lively " hook called the " Spirits of 
the Age," has hit the nail upon the head in his estimate 
of the genius of Robt. Browning ! 

10. "As slippery as Peel."— St. 23. 
In this allusion, I disclaim any political allusion to " the 
sliding scale," or any personality in relation to the late Premier, 
I am not answerable for the typographical error of printing the 
word with a capital initial. The allusion in the text is to a 
Thing, not a Person. Sir Rohert, as a man, is an unalterable 
character — cotton to the hack-bone. 

11. " 'Twas Hamlet being murdered by young Kean." — St. 25. 
This gentleman, I understand, has threatened never to per- 
form again in London. Let it be confessed that the town has 
done its utmost to deserve the threat. It is not always that 
merit is thus rewarded. 



CANTO III. 

12. " For I have found when quite tired of ' one's deary/ 
Pleasure which once seemed rapturous and sublime, 
Looked sad and loathsome — lifeless — soulless — tame ; 
One scarcely can believe it is the same ! " — St. 3. 
So true is this that some cunning professors have affected to 
eschew fruition altogether, as the only way to prevent the ardour 
of desire. Thus in an old poem we read — (a lesson too severe 
for amorous Abbots) — 

" Love is our reason's paradox, which still 
Against the judgment doth maintain the will; 



192 NOTES TO THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 

And governs by such arbitrary laws, 
It only makes the act our likings cause : 
We have no brave revenge, but to forego 
Our full desires, and starve the tyrant so. 
They whom the rising blood tempts not to taste, 
Preserve a stock of love can never waste : 
"When easy people who their wish enjoy, 
Like prodigals, at once their wealth destroy. 
Adam, till now, had stayed in Paradise, 
Had his desires been bounded by his eyes. 
When he did more than look, that made the offence, 
And forfeited his state of innocence." 
13. " The crowning glory of her virtuous sex." — St. 27. 
The author here, perhaps, may appear too hard on the sex, 
as if he were inclined to insinuate the impossibility of finding 
any virtue in it. In disproof of this, however, take the follow- 
ing from an old book of paradoxes, which, as it has neither 
date nor title-page, I cannot more particularly describe. 

" I am not so courageous, that I dare defend women, or pro- 
nounce them good ; yet we see physicians allow some virtue in 
even* poison : Then why should we except women ? Since 
certainly they are good for physic at least, so as some wine is 
good for a fever. And though they are the occasioners of 
many sins, they are also the punishers and revengers of the 
same sins ; for I have seldom seen one who consumes his sub- 
stance upon them escape distress and beggary, and this is their 
justice. And if suurn cuique dare be the fulfilling of all civil 
justice, they are most just, for they deny that which is theirs to 
no man. 

" Tanquam non liceat nulla puella negat." 
And who may doubt of great wisdom in them, that doth but 



NOTES TO THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 193 

observe with how much labour and cunning our justices and 
other dispensers of the laws study to embrace them, and how 
zealously our preachers [wo doubt a sly allusion to Boccaccio' s 
Abbot of Florence] dehort men from them, only by urging 
those subtelties, and policies, and wisdom which are in them ? 
Or who can deny them a good measure of fortitude, if he con- 
sider how valiant men they have overthrown ; and being them- 
selves overthrown, how much and how patiently they bear ? 
And though they be most intemperate, I care not, for I under- 
took to furnish them with some virtue, not with all. Necessity 
which makes even bad things good, prevails also for them ; for 
we must say of them, as of some sharp finding laws, If men 
were free from infirmities, they were needless. These or 
none must serve for reasons, and it is my great happiness that 
examples prove not rides ; for to confirm this opinion, the 
world yields not one example !" To this tirade, suffice it to 
reply — " Qui magis sapiunt, magis insipiunt." 

14. " He found her with the doctor at some strife." — St. 31. 

There is a current suspicion, amounting to belief, that doc- 
tors kill more than they cure. Our old paradoxical friend above 
quoted, affirms indeed, that " a new physician had need of a 
new churchyard." " I dispute not," he adds, "who kills safest, 
the Galenist or the Paracelsian. 'Tis all one whether a man 
die by the stiletto or broadsword." I find him soon after ask- 
ing " Where do they live longer than in the Orcades, Forest of 
Axden, Norway, &c. or sounder, than where the name of physic 
is not once heard of ? 

" Quot Themison aegros Autumno occiderit uno ?" 

Anon, he complains that " they are rewarded too for their 
murders : They are the common executioners [kill at least 200 
o 



194 NOTES TO THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 

to 1 more than they cure] : — their art (if one) is but conjec- 
tural, full of imposture, the devil Apollo the inventor of it. And 
if success follow, it is by chance not their cunning ; or nature 
had done it without them. And for this very reason, Avicenna 
(an eminent physician) wept every time he prescribed a purge ; 
and well he might, for he could not but know that many dis- 
eases no physic can cure. 

"Tollere nodosam nescit medicina podagram." 
15. "Wordsworth wrote fifteen sonnets praising hanging." — 

St. 33. 
To counterbalance with the ladies the abuse of physicians in 
my former note, it may be mentioned that the faculty once re- 
stored a woman to life who had been hanged. Her name was 
Anne Green, who was executed at Oxford, 4th December, 1650. 
The pamphlet recording the story is so scarce as not now to be 
purchased. Our old paradoxical friend, however, has more than 
one fling at it, apostrophising in rhyme, both the hangman and 
the gallows — not neglecting the amende honorable to the phy- 
sicians, which he doth in the following rhapsody {inter alia) : — 
" To raise a pyramid unto your skill, 
Were to mistrust experience, and still 
Think Death a gyant, whose vast gripe could span, 
And squeeze to nought both memory and man. 
Ye are not mortal, nor need fear to die ; 
To conquer Death is immortality. 
Ye have done that, marble may serve to hide 
Its own dust now, or tell who should have dy'd : 
There is no other use for't. And thou Death, 
Vaunt not henceforth, 'tis with thy leave we breathe J 
Thou'rt vanquish't quite, and this thy mulct shall be, 
To write probatum to their victory." 



1NOTES TO THE ABEOT OF FLORENCE. 195 

After relating the story of her recovery, the narrator proceeds 
— " Perhaps it may be expected by some (and 'tis pity I can 
give them no better satisfaction) that I should here relate some 
fine story (like those of Orpheus or zEneas in the poets) of what 
visions this maiden saw in the other world ; what celestial 
music, or hellish howling she heard; what spirits she con- 
versed with, and what revelations she brought back with her, 
concerning the present times, or the events of things to come. 
But for such matters the reader must rest contented, since she 
was so far from knowing any thing whilst she was dead, that 
she remembered not what had happened to her even when she 
was yet alive. Her spirits, at that time, being so fixed or be- 
numbed with fear, as not to admit of any new impressions ; or 
otherwise so turbulent and unquiet, as presently to discompose 
and obliterate them. As we often see it fares with men that 
are buzzed in the head with drink, or transported with madness, 
who, though they seem sensible enough of every present object 
that moves them, yet after they recover can own but little of 
what they did or said before." She was asked " concerning 
her sense and apprehensions during the time she was hanged. 
To which she answered at first somewhat impertinently, talking 
as if she had been to suffer ; and when they spake unto her 
concerning her miraculous deliverance, she answered, that she 
hoped God would give her patience, and the like. Afterward 
when she was better recovered, she affirmed that she neither 
remembered how the fetters were Mocked off, how she went 
out of the prison, when she was turned off the ladder, whether 
any psalm was sung or not, nor ivas she sensible of any pains 
that she could remember ; what is most observable is, that she 
came to herself as if she had awakened out of a sleep, not re- 



196 NOTES TO THE ABBOT OF FLORENCE. 

covering the use of her speech by slow degrees, but in a man- 
ner altogether, beginning to speak just where she left off on 
the gallows." — Narrative of what had happened to Anne Green 
from her execution at Oxford, December 4, 1650, to the time 
she revived, and (by the care of physicians) perfectly recovered 
— "Written by an Oxford Scholar, and published by Tho. Ro- 
binson, A. D. 1651. The poor girl had been executed for 
infanticide ; there seems, however, to have been little doubt of 
her innocence. She lived afterwards to marry and to be a 
mother, living and dying in good repute. One such fact against 
capital punishments is worth all the Laureate's sonnets in their 
defence. 

16. — "At war with dismal Home and Tragedy." — St. 37. 

I have taken the liberty of calling Mr. Home " dismal," not 
from any personal habit, nor from the tone of his writing, but 
from the state of mind in which I generally find myself after 
reading one of his laborious productions : I had once intended 
calling him " Saturn Home," (not on account of his being the 
brother of Jupiter, which I am told he fancies himself to be,) 
but from the curious subjects he chooses for his Tragedies : he 
seems to me the Poet Laureate of Infanticide, as Wordsworth 
is of Capital Punishment ; in Cosco the old Father sticks his 
Son in a fine, heroic, calf- killing vein, which reminds me of the 
current tradition of Shakespear, killing pigs to the sound of 
Blank Verse. In addition to this, I am told he is engaged on 
a Tragedy called " Titus Manlius," and another called " Lucius 
Junius Brutus," both of which worthies kill their children. 
What a splendid Poor Law Commissioner he would make ! — He 
is after Graham's own heart. 



NOTES TO SALVESTRA. 



CANTO I. 

1. " Neuryg's verse." — St. 2. 
A Youth (Anglo-German) of some promise, but deserving of 
much castigation for a presumptuous preface to a late volume. 
I conceal his name in pity to his tender years. Let him, how- 
ever, not again offend, nor think that the way to gain more 
popularity than Wordsworth and Browning, is by writing 
worse. They are not such fools as he mistakes them for. 

2. " Our Pelican."— St. 5. 
Our Saviour is thus tenderly denominated by Dante in the 
XXV. Canto of the Paradiso. He describes St. John, the be- 
loved Disciple, as reposing on his bosom ; and at the close of 
the poem, he informs us that (we quote from Mr. Wright's ex- 
cellent analysis) " by the intercession of St. Bernard with the 
Virgin Mary, he was endued with grace to look upon the 
brightness of Jehovah ; and offered up a prayer, that he might 
be enabled to show forth to unborn nations some traces of the 
glory revealed to him. In the profundity of the Divine Light, 
he beheld all the universe contains — his power of vision gaining 
force as he prolonged the contemplation — till, absorbed in 
the overwhelming glory of the sight, he found it impossible 
to turn away. The Trinity he attempted to describe by com- 



198 NOTES TO SALVESTRA. 

paring its appearance to three circles of different hues, but of 
like dimensions. He then asserted the impossibility of relating 
all he beheld ; and closes his work by informing us, that hav- 
ing reached the height of his desire, his will became wholly 
swayed by the influence of Divine Love." 

3. " Even Willis, flippant lozel transatlantic, 

Of both the effect and reason can discourse — 
The tailor's sense of beauty makes him frantic, 
And operates in a way that's clearly necromantic ; 
Since thus the father's fancy moulds the mother's." — 

St. 9 & 10. 

See a tale in N. P. Willis's " Dashes at Life with a Tree Pen- 
cil," in which he attributes the general comeliness of Tailors' 
Daughters to the Father's professional Sense of Beauty, as cul- 
tivated by the study of costume. 

4. " Or Zadkiel."— St. 10. 
Such is the astrological name of Lieut. Morrison, the editor 
of a well known ominous almanack, annually published for the 
benefit of the unlearned and superstitious. 

5. " Like Lady Hester Stanhope." — St. 17. 

See Dr. M 's Memoirs of Lady Hester Stanhope on this 

head. 

6. " The Megatherium old."— St. 19. 
There are allusions in previous stanzas to Mesmerism and Mrs. 
Caudle — the former promoting and the latter preventing sleep ; 
— but things so notorious need no note, just in the same way that 



NOTES TO SALVESTRA. 199 

an uxorious husband has no motive to bigamy. The present al- 
lusion, on the contrary, seems to require explanation, as it is not 
so generally understood that the Lady Sighieri was the Old 
Woman who lately corresponded with " The Times," under the 
signature of " Anti-Megatherium." 

7. " The aspiring sweep." — St. 35. 
I recollect a police case, where a boy insisted on being ap- 
prenticed to a sweep : his alleged motive was the idea he had 
formed of the superiority implied in the professional privilege 
of looking down on every body else from the elevation of the 
chimney pot. 

8. " 0, artist Blake ! compassion still thou deign'st, 

In thy most deathless • Songs of Innocence."' — St. 36. 

See the celebrated William Blake's " Songs of Innocence and 
Experience, showing the two contrary States of the Human 
Soul," — poems unequalled, for their touching simplicity and 
brilliant word-tinting. Nothing can be more pathetic, than his 
" Little Black Boy," " School Boy," " Chimney Sweeper," 
" The Clod and the Pebble," " London," " Little Boy and Girl 
Lost and Found," &c. The most finished poet might learn 
something from these unelaborate effusions ; — were it not that 
the production of such pieces at all is little short of miraculous. 
It is not Art, but Inspiration. 

9. "Anciently, 
Croesus so thought — and suffered." — St. 38. 
See Herodotus, I. c. 26. 



200 NOTES TO SALYESTRA. 

10. " Nor Hymen quenched his arrows, when they wed, 

But, with his nuptial torch, relumined them instead." — St. 53. 

These hues cannot fail to suggest to the recollection of the 
connoisseur, Mr. George Patten's fine picture of " Hymen 
burning the Arrows of Love," — a work painted with a classical 
breadth of style, of which, unhappily, no other modern artist 
has, as yet, set a like example. 



CANTO II. 

11. " Like Dr. Kitto's voice in Burlington Arcade." — St. 7. 
The particulars referred to will be found related, by Dr. 
Kitto himself, in his work on " The Lost Senses, Series I. — 
Deafness," published in Knight's " Weekly Volume." As the 
Doctor himself can afford to laugh at his infirmity, he will be 
the last to censure a humorous allusion to it, particularly for 
the national purpose asserted in the text. 

12. " La Femme toute comme ilfaut." — St. 11. 

M. H. de Balzac has given, in a popular essay, a witty 
account of the modern Parisian lady, as the " Femme comme il 
faut" who has in France taken the place of the " Great Lady" of 
former times. " The Great Lady" exclaims Balzac, " is dead, 
she has expired with the gorgeous solemnities of the last 
century — her powder, patches, high-heeled shoes, and well- 
stiffened stays, all bedizened with bows. A duchess goes now 
through all doors without having any one of them enlarged for 
the passage of her hoop ; in short, the Empire saw the last 



NOTES TO SALVESTRA. 201 

of the long -trained gowns. I have yet to learn why the 
sovereign, who chose to see his Court swept hy satins and 
velvets, did not establish, by some irrevocable law, the right of 
primogeniture for, at least, certain families. Napoleon did not 
foresee the application of the code he so gloried in ; in creating 
duchesses, he gave birth only to owtfemmes comme il faut ; — 
they resulted from his legislation, and may be called its mediate 
product." " All things in France have conspired to give influ- 
ence to our femme comme ilfaut. The aristocracy assented to 
her government by retiring to their distant seats, where they 
hide themselves to die. The women who might have moulded 
the manners of Europe — commanded opinion and fitted it as 
their glove — ruled the world by governing its rulers — the men 
of resource — of thought — they have committed the error of 
abandoning the field, because ashamed of having to contend 
with the middle classes, who, intoxicated with power, have 
thrown themselves into the arena to be torn in pieces, perhaps, 
by the brute multitude that is following rapidly in their steps. 
Thus, when the citizen goes to look at a princess, he perceives 
only a young person comme il faut" " The knell of high 
society is sounding ! Do you hear it ? the first stroke is 
the modern phrase of La femme comme il faut ; this woman, 
proceeding from the ranks of nobility, or put forward by the 
Bourgeoisie, coming indifferently from all parts, capital or pro- 
vince, is the type of the actual time — a last image of good 
taste, talent, grace and distinction united, but all lessened and 
degenerated." — " Formerly, a woman might have the voice of a 
fish-seller, the stride of a grenadier, the brow of the boldest 
courtezan, a thick and heavy hand, and the foot of an elephant, 
she was none the less a Great Lady — but now, were she a 



202 NOTES TO SALVESTRA. 

Montmorency (if the daughter of a Montmorency could be so 
degenerate), she would be no longer unefemme comme ilfaut." 
But stop ! are not these, and other such allusions in this 
poem, gross anachronisms in relation to Boccaccio's story ? Of 
course, they are ! But, kind and courteous lector ! see you not 
a reason for it — a purpose — an end ? Of course, you do ! I am 
glad, you are satisfied. 

13. "In the youth's lap plombs down — kissing him till he 
blushes."— St. 18. 

No libel. The reflective author of " The Tiara and the Tur- 
ban " describes the incident as happening to himself at Rome 
— the Pandar being his tutor, a Roman Catholic priest, esteemed 
for learning and wit, and not otherwise for licentiousness. 
Moreover, " The Decameron " itself is full of similar instances. 



CANTO III. 

14. " He will parade his quarrel with the fates, 

And join, in social pact, a band of desperates." — St. 1. 

There was, some short time since, and probably still is, a 
society in Paris, expressly for the " mutual encouragement of 
suicide," all the members of which, on joining it, swore to ter- 
minate their existence by their own hands, when life became 
insupportable. As to the other statements in the text, I have 
the authority of M. Esquirol for saying, that " Frenchmen sel- 
dom go mad from love. A Frenchman often kills himself in 
a sally of passion and feeling, but is seldom in love long enough 
to go mad about it." 



NOTES TO SALVESTRA. 203 

15. " Its Purgatory song." — St. 3. 

" The Purgatory of Suicides," a poem, by Thomas Cooper, 
the Chartist. 

16. " Like Humboldt's Cosmos — 
Or Mahomet's Religion." — St. 8. 

Alike in this, that they are both human — yet both aiming at 
divine results ; — the one a spiritual, the other a physical crea- 
tion. 

17. " Of Jervis ask— or Jelf."— St. 21. 

See " Five Discourses on Subjects contained in the Book of 
Genesis," by the Rev. J. Jervis ; the learned author of which 
contends for the legitimacy of Mahomet's mission. As to Dr. 
Jelf, I wish, in common with all who know him, that he may 
soon be made a Bishop ! 

18. " Yet, in the midst of all, are holy Prayers, 

That, like the Lark, soar upward from the ground." 

St. 45. 

These lines cannot fail to remind the reader of the following 
beautiful passage in the works of the divinely eloquent Dr. 
Jeremy Taylor. " Anger is a perfect alienation of the mind 
from prayer, and therefore is contrary to that attention, which 
presents our prayers in a right line to God. For so have I seen 
a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing 
as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the 
clouds ; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sigh- 
ings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and 
inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, 
than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of 



204 NOTES TO SALVESTRA. 

his wings ; till the little creature was forced to sit down and 
pant, and stay till the storm was over, and then it made a pros- 
perous flight, and did rise and sing as if it had learned musick 
and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the 
ak ahout his ministeries here helow : so is the prayer of a good 
man ; when his affairs have required business, and his business 
was matter of discipline, and his discipline was to pass upon a 
sinning person, or had a design of charity, his duty met with 
infirmities of a man, and anger was its instrument, and the in- 
strument became stronger than the prime agent, and raised a 
tempest and overruled the man ; and then his prayer was 
broken, and his thoughts were troubled, and his words went 
up towards a cloud, and his thoughts pulled them back again, 
and made them without intention ; and the good man sighs for 
his infirmity, but must be content to lose the prayer, and he 
must recover it, when his anger is removed, and his spirit is 
becalmed, made even as the brow of Jesus, and smooth like the 
heart of God ; and then it ascends to heaven upon the wings of 
the holy dove, and dwells with God, till it returns like the use- 
ful bee, laden with a blessing and the dew of heaven." 

19. " Each ordered orb, in Heaven, 

Some crowned Saint controls." — Requiem, v. 2. 
This notion is peculiarly Florentine, being that adopted by 
Dante as the theory of the third part of his Divina Commedia. 
He places paradise — where ? In the Planets — the Moon — Mer- 
cury — Venus — the Sun — Mars— Jupiter and Saturn — also in 
the constellation, Gemini, &c. But, alas, he forgot his mater- 
nal planet, Earth ! Would it not have been possible to have 
planted some realm of paradise — some kingdom of heaven — 
there, also ? Ah ! Dante ! — 



PART II. 



FIORANTE, 



THE BRIDAL EVE. 



FIORANTE, 



THE BRIDAL EVE. 



In Florence, that sweet city of Italy, 

Dwelt a young maiden past description fair : 

Her figure tall and graceful — and her eye 

Was bright and azure as the skies are there !- 
In short, her beauty was so wondrous rare, 

She was a marvel to all passers bye ! 

Her name was Fiorante : rich and good : — 
The Count Rigondi was her lover ; he 

(So it was rumoured in the neighbourhood) 
Was on the brink of his felicity ! 
He truly loved her to idolatry : — 

And her fond ear to early marriage wooed. 



t FIORANTE, OR 

" Hast thou e'er loved, my Fiorante dear ?" 
" Am I not thine, (said she) by every vow ? " 

" Hast thou e'er loved another ?" and a fear 

Stole on her as she answer 'd : — " Not till now I" 
He pressed his lips upon her blushing brow, 

And clasped her to his heart more fond and near ! 

" I made a vow in early youth," he said, 
" And knit myself by every solemn oath 
I would scorn to wed the fairest maid 
Had she been ever bound by lover's troth ; 
And this resolve has strengthened with my growth : 

Right blest am I that all my fear has fled ! " 

And then he kissed her fair and gem-wreathed brow,. 
Bidding adieu with many a lingering word ; 

The Lady Fiorante ne'er till now 

Those accents sweet with so much sadness heard s 
Those tones, whose music she to all preferred, 

Fell on her ear like to a broken vow ! 



THE BRIDAL EVE. 

For though no passion in her heart had dwelt, 
Yet she had listened to a lover's suit, 

Long at her feet and lowly had he knelt, 

Pleading with crafty looks and words astute ; 
Now warmly loud — now eloquently mute, 

Nor vainly — though no love the maiden felt. 

And she had promised to become a bride 

And yielded up her troth — though not her heart : 

And now Rigondi just had left her side, 

She felt t'was wrong to let him thus depart, 
Nor to his loving ear the truth impart. 

But he was gone ! and evil must betide ! — 

There sat she in her sadness desolate : — 
Tearless, like one who cannot weep, altho' 

One tear would loosen the whole burning weight 
Which rests upon the heart, a mountain woe ! 
At last the heaven-sent gift began to flow, 

And as she wept her agonies abate ! 



b FIORANTE, OR 

" Oh would," wept Fiorante, " I had told 
The Marquis Vianelli's suit, when I, 

Was but a child, scarce fifteen summers old ! " 
Just at this moment Guenda's step was nigh — 
" Oh ! what," said she, " has made my lady cry ?" 

For down the lady's cheeks the tears still rolled. 

" Oh, Guenda, I am lost, and past all grace, 
I have done that which poisons every thought, 

And makes me even in mine own eyes base ! 

Deliberate falsehood has this sorrow wrought ! — 
Alas ! how soon are shame and anguish brought ; 

All, woe is me to shame my noble race ! " 

Falsehood will drag a spirit from on high, 
And plunge it lower than the meanest thing 

That crawls on earth in sluggish apathy ! 

The loathsome toad ! — the bat with filthy wing ! — 
The reptile with its sharp and venomous sting ! — 

Is nobler than false man ! — that scorner of the sky ! 



THE BRIDAL EVE. 



We live not if we live not in the truth ! — 
It is the light by which we look on Heaven I 

It is the human soul's immortal youth ! 
It is the breath of life by Jesus given !— 
The deathless spell by which the fiend is driven 

From human hearts to Hell's own depths uncouth ! 

Some men outlive their glory, as a star 
Outlives its light, which ever after strays 

Blindly thro' Heav'n, from its own orbit far, — 
Giving no light, nor feeling other rays. — 
And thus the Marquis took to godless ways, 

Since had he been with all sweet thoughts at war S 

High bred and desperate ! — careless of all ties ! 

A reckless liver on from hour to hour ! 
Looking on life with irreligious eyes, 

And prizing nothing but the wanton's bower ! 

To mend his waste he sought a wealthy dower, 
And to the Sire of Fiorante hies ! 



b FIORANTE, OR 

Aod told the aged Count his feigning tale 
Of fervent passion for his daughter dear ! 

How that his wasting cheek grew wan and pale, 
And that his dying day was surely near, 
If Fiorante scorned his suit to hear ! 

A lying Snare to work a maiden's bale ! 

The guileless father, waxing weak with years, 
Believed the flattery of the glozing man, 

And promised him support, while silly tears 
Adown his aged cheeks in folly ran ; 
Then to his daughter went, and straight began 

To tell her all ; she listens with sad ears ! 

For she had heard vague tales of his excess ! — 
And that he little cared for Holy men ; 

In sooth his name did never widow bless, 
He let no captive loose from goalers den ! 
No gentle deed from him had origin — 

In short he was more vile than I express. 



THE BRIDAL EVE. 

But on his knees lie swore amended life, 

And bade her save him from his soul's despair, 

"O lady dear," quoth he, " wert thou my wife, 
I would be virtuous, as thou art fair ! 
Thy gentle ways alone should be my care — 

No longer with myself and all at strife. 

" Therefore if thou would'st save a soul from sin, 
And to sweet Virtue's path a heart restore, 

Affect my suit, and henceforth I begin 
A pious life, to wander never more ! 
And thou shalt be the Saint I will adore, 

If thou from riot's grasp my soul will win !" 

His earnest pleading touched her tender breast 
(For she was aye to tenderness inclined) 

Tho' to the Marquis boldly she confest, 
"He was not altogether to her mind." 
Still to her Sire's command the maid resigned 

Her better judgment, trusting to the best ! 



10 FIORANTE, OR 

At this the Marquis fell before her feet, 

And kissed her hand which timidly she gave, 

While in a voice melodiously sweet, 
He swore to be her ever faithful slave, 
From that sweet moment till he reached his grave, 

Which 'neath her smile he would with rapture greet ! 

He was in truth a mighty hypocrite, 

So perfect, that he oft himself perplexed ! 

And peradventure deemed his actions right, 
E'en when to foulest error most annexed ! 
In short, his evil living had so vexed 

His mind, he scarce distinguished black from white ! 

The Lady Fiorante had a maid, 

Who from her earliest childhood had been reared 

Her living playmate in the sun and shade ; 
Her merry smile her gentle mistress cheered : 
And now they both had nineteen summers neared, 

Yet neither's lips ungentle words had said. 



THE BRIDAL EYE. 11 

The simple Guenda fell beneath the art 

Of Vianelli, and to virtue died ; 
The lordly scoundrel deemed her spotless heart 

A wanton plaything for his lustful pride ; 

Her sweets once rifled, she was thrown aside, 
Like a scorned weed within some crowded mart ! 

After a time the lady's father died, 

Whereon she told the Marquis, "He no more 

Must think to gain her for his wedded bride, 
But bade him to some loftier maiden soar." 
He read his cold dismissal o'er and o'er, 

And vowed to make her feel his injured pride. 

Soon after this the Count Rigondi saw 
Sweet Fiorante, and he straightway felt 

That love was now his being's only law, 
And at the lady's feet a suitor knelt ; 
While she, moved by his tale, began to melt ! 

True love from maiden heart will ever true love draw. 



12 FIORAXTE, OR 

The ruined Marquis, reckless in despair, 

Grew mad for gold to help his sore distress : 

It was to him as needful as the air, 
For he was driven by his wild excess 
To the last ducat ! — mighty wretchedness ! — 

To fill his purse was now his only care ! 

The drowncr catches at a floating straw, 

And so the Marquis, when poor Guenda told 

Rigondi's whim : — at once the villain saw, 
Opening before his eyes a mine of gold : 
Little poor Guenda thought that she had sold 

Her gentle mistress to a vampire's law ! 

The Marquis bade forthwith his victim hie 
To Fiorante with these words : — " I can 

Wrestle no longer with adversity ; 
I am a ruined and a desperate man ! 
Therefore you must not every action scan, 

With the keen glance of cold propriety ! 



THE BRIDAL EVE. 18 

"I must have gold : — Lady, your purse is deep, 
A thousand ducats scarce can make it less : — ■ 

Send them to me before these eyelids sleep ; 
Else you shall share my soul's dark loneliness ; 
I will at once my secret power express ; 

Rigondi knows not of our love, — now weep/' 

Upon her knees the simple maiden fell, 

And begged her cold seducer spare this task : 

•' Guenda," said he, " I'm girt around with Hell, 
Else think you I had deigned this boon to ask ? 
I who have drained the very costliest flask, 

And stood on Fortune's giddiest pinnacle. 

" Pause, and I tell your lady all your shame ; 
Traitress to honour !" — with a sigh she rose, 

And to her gentle mistress told the same : 
As one who staggers at onrushing woes, 
The Lady to her purse in silence goes, 

And sends the ducats !— ah ! bewildered dame ! 



14 FIORAXTE, OR 

'Tis sad to tell how oft he came again, 
Until the Lady had no more to send ; 

Now when he found at last his threats all vain, 
And that his golden treasure neared its end : 
To other ways his wit began to bend, 

And this became the counsel of his brain ! 



The Count Rigondi, ere his bridal day, 
To his affianced gave a glittering hand 

Of diamonds, flashing like a star's bright ray : 
This precious gift did the base wretch demand : 
But upon this the Lady took her stand, 

And like a hunted creature turned at bay ! 

The Marquis sought Rigondi : — seized his hand 
And with dire malice of the Count inquired 

If he in Matrimony's holy band 

Sought Fiorante : — the young lover fired 
At this demand : and speedily desired 

That he would speak what he could understand. 



THE BRIDAL EVE. 15 

" Doubtless she told you I have earlier claims 
Upon her hand : — but I will these resign 

If you prefer her to all other dames ; 

Only I'd have you know she has been mine ! 
When young you've heard I did to love incline, 

And she was one of my deserted flames ! 

" I thought it only was a friendly deed, 

To let you know, I might perchance renew, 

My suit to her, when from some troubles freed 
Which press upon me now ; — I say adieu, 
Dear Count ; what 1 have told you is quite true, 

For slander is a stranger to my creed ! " 

The Count in anger drew his sword and cried, 
" Unmeasured liar" — "Nay, (the Marquis said,) 

" I wear a sword, too, hanging at my side, 
And therefore be the blood upon your head ; 
What — thank me thus ! — I'd better seen you led, 

A doating husband by a guilty bride. 



16 FIORANTE, 

" I have no object, save a loft? 

Of woman's deep deceit : — Nay, Sir, prepare, 
We all must die, since we have all been born, 

And I am not the man for death to care ; 

I cannot fight for one I think more fair — 
She was my rose, I would spare you the thorn ! 

" Methinks it had been wiser on your part, 
To make inquiry ; what I say is truth ! 

Xow, Count, guard well the passes to your heart ; 
I feel your worth : — you are a valiant youth, 
And have been made her victim, in good sooth. 

You're not the first to feel young Cupid's dart. 

" You're young : — so listen to an older man, 
Perchance a wiser : — I mean you no ill : 

But the thought somewhat in my fancy ran, 
That you had shaped out in your youthful will, 
Never to wed, not e'en the fairest, 'till 

You'd met a heart whose love with you began ! 



THE BRIDAL EVE. 17 

" So let us have a quiet wager laid ; 

I undertake this virtuous one will meet, 
Even without the escort of her maid, 

Me at lone midnight in the common street ! 

I pledge a thousand ducats on this feat ; 
You pause : — I see ! — ah, well : — you are afraid ! " 

" Nay ! " cried Rigondi " I will peril all ! 

Mark me, hut I refrain from angry breath, 
I am prepared by this to stand or fall : — 

You'll answer for this to the very death ! 

" The sky to-night," the fiery lover saith, 
" O'er one of us shall spread its solemn pall ! " 

Forth from Rigondi, Vianelli sent 

His page to summon Guenda to his aid. 

She came, and he, most gentle blandishment, 
And artful tale of feigned concern displayed : 
"No more shall Fiorante me upbraid," 

Said he, "I go to utter banishment ! 

c 



18 FIORANTE, OR 

" For I am tired and weary of my life, 
And have resolved to wander far away 

From these old scenes of happiness and strife, 
But ere I go I have some words to say 
To one whom I have loved in happier day, 

And whom I fondly hoped to call my wife. 

" But that is past : — the idle dream is o'er, 
I have her miniature : some letters too : 

To her own hand alone I will restore 

These sweet memorials of my passion true : 
For these, her willing gifts, I crave in lieu 

Two hundred ducats, neither less nor more. 



" Bid her then meet me when the bell tolls eight,, 
Beneath the shadow of San Marco's pile, 

If she refuse me, let her dread my hate, 
And bid adieu to her Rigondi's smile ; 
For I will then expose her lying guile, 

And to his ears our former loves relate : 



THE BRIDAL EVE. 19 

(e The portrait and the letters will confirm 

My tale, and render her denial vain ; 
Then he will hate her as a poisonous worm, 

Casting her from him as a blight and stain 

Upon his honor ; let her not disdain 
The words I send ; — else of her woe the germ ! 

" But if she come I quit this town for ever : 
No fear of me shall dim her future years, 

And none Rigondi from her side shall sever ; 
While I, an outcast and a thing of tears, 
For her sake undergo taunts, scorns, and jeers, 

And leave my native Italy fur ever ! 

" She need not even thank me ! — she may be 
Haughty and silent: — but I deeply swore, 

In the first day of my adversity, 

That to her hand alone would I restore 
The gifts of one that I shall see no more, 

Save in my dreams of midnight phantasy." 



20 FIORANTE, OR 

' Twere vain to tell the sorrow and dismay 
Of Fiorante when this message came : 

Upon the eve too of her bridal day ; 

First pride and anger fired the woman's frame, 
And roused within her eye th' indignant flame ; — 

Then fear arose and scared her rage away. 

Musing she stood : — while Guenda counselled so : — 
" Gain but the portrait and the letters, then 

You can defy the malice of your foe, 
And scorn the very wickedest of men : 
The Count Rigondi cometh not till ten, 

And in your favour doth the current flow. 

" Wrapt in my cloak no human eye can see 
Your meeting. You regain your gifts, return 

To a long life of pure felicity — 

For you the torch of Hymen then will burn ; 
Dear lady, do not in your anger spurn ** 

The counsel of vour maid's fidelity ! " 



THE BRIDAL EVE. 21 

Then Fiorante, bursting from the cloud 

Of her thick doubt, said with a fluttering breath, 

" Oh ! would that I were lying in rny shroud, 
A pallid dweller in the arms of death ! 
O happier far than now with bridal wreath, 

Bound on my brow with gladsome music loud ! " 

Then sitting down she said, " She would not trust 
The heartless Vianelli ; she would dare 

The very worst, and be to honor just ! 
She had at last a refuge in despair, 
And if the worst should come the grave she'd dare, 

Rather than do what he had said she must." 

We leave the lady to her gloomy thought, 
And to Rigondi and his tempter go. 

True to the moment Vianelli sought 

The Count, and when the golden sun was low, 
And the bright moon began with light to glow, 

The doubting lover to the spot was brought ! 



Tl FIOHANTE, OR 

Beneath the shadow of San Marco's pile, 
Rigondi stood with fallen heart and cold, 

The Marquis paced beneath the moon's bright smile/ 
Reckless thro' hate and in despair made bold. 
Upon their ears the eight hour bell now tolled, 

The traitor humming gaily all the w T hile. 

Was that a footstep ? No ! — an anxious pause : 
She will not come, the Count in rapture thought, 

And half his glist'ning weapon he undraws, 
When lo ! his ear a distant echo caught, 
Which o'er his limbs an icy anguish brought, 

A veiled figure comes ! — Oh ! fallen ! fallen cause I 

'Twas she ! — the Lady Fiorante ! there 

She stood some moments ere her speech she found 

" Here are two hundred ducats!" — In despair 
The Count stood rooted to the silent ground ! 
Drinking like poison every fatal sound, 

Which seemed to give grim horror to the air. 



THE BRIDAL EVE. 23 

"- The portrait and the letters here behold ! " 
Said Vianelli, in a quiet tone, 

" But, ere I give them, I must make me bold 
To have a kiss : we here are quite alone." 
His arm around her panting waist is thrown. 

" Hence," she exclaims, " thou fiend in human mould ! " 

Forth rushed the Count — his weapon flashing bright, 
" A trick ! a trick ! — I see the villain's plan ! " 

While Fiorante — speechless through affright, 
Retired in haste behind the perjured man ! 
At whom Rigondi madly, fiercely ran ! 

And both stood full revealed in the moon's light ! 

Rigondi struck the Marquis with his sword, 
Saying, " Here, villain ! one of us must die ! " 

The other drew his blade without a word, 
And measuring his opponent with his eye, 
Took up his ground with great complacency ; 

And now the weapon's clash alone was heard ! 



24 FIORANTE, OR 

As one new waking from a dream, she grasped 

The arm of Vianelli — "Turn on me 
Thy murderous sword ! " Fiorante wildly gasped. 

" Woman, away — you'll bear me down! " cried he ; 

Then, gathering up his energy, he unclasped 
Her hand, and threw her from him heavily ! 

Rigondi, starting backward, slipped and went 
Upon his knee : the Marquis closer prest, 

And, sweeping round his sword, as down he bent 
To strike Rigondi's unprotected crest, 
The lady rushed between, and in her breast 

Received the point, murmuring, " I die content ! " 

At the same instant Vianelli fell, 

Pierced by Rigondi to the heart ; he cries — 
" May darkness drag the woman's soul to hell V* 

And with this curse upon his lips he dies ! 

Dead in the moonlight the slain villain lies, 
The warm blood oozing from its broken cell I 



THE BRIDAL EVE. 

Rigondi knelt at Fiorante's side, 

Who told him all her story word by word ; 

With her last breath, the Saints she glorified 
That she had saved her lover from the sword 
Of the base traitor whom her soul abhorred : 

And, pressing the Count's hand, Fiorante died, 



THE END, 



A VERY ANCIENT VARIATION 



LEGEND 



MOST HOLY SAINT DUNSTAN, 



ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 



LEGEND, &c. 

The Archfiend determined one day to make trial 

Whether Saints to their Lord could be rendered dis- 
loyal, 

And their names, to choose from, while his dragon he 
mounted, 

(Or the chief ones, at least,) on his fingers he 
counted. 

The legend informs us the dress that he wore 
Was with crosses adorned, both behind and before ; 
His dragon he loosed after one or two stages, 
And sent back to Hades equerries and pages. 



30 LEGEND OF 

His equipage now was so saintly and meek — 
His garments so flowing, his mule was so sleek, 
None would ever expect to see him where hard 

knocks come, 
But esteem him some middle aged clerical cox- 
comb. 



As he ambled — he pondered on how he should act, 

And which of the blessed should first be attacked. 

When the great name of Dunstan occurred to his 
mind, 

And to tempt the Archbishop the Archfiend in- 
clined. 



Afar from his palace — afar from the court 
Was the Primate retired, not for solace or sport, 
But with twelve holy monks, in an abbey renowned, 
For penance and tears was the Saint to be found. 



ST. DUNSTAN. 31 

Their vow was, each night, till their lives should be 

ended, 
In a coffin to sleep — (by the Pope 'twas com- 

mended !) 
To eat bitter herbs in the place of rich dishes — 
And to drink water !— liquor created for fishes ! 



A most mischevous thought crossed the wicked one's 

pate 
As he thundered his rat — tat — tat — tat at the gate, 
And a lay brother porter, not dreaming of evil, 
Wide opened the wicket — and in walked the 

Devil ! 



Now, in spite of the prose that philosophers chatter, 
To let in the Devil is no such hard matter — 
But once well intrenched, his defences are stout, 
And 'tis not quite so easy the turning him out ! 



32 LEGEND OF 

He told the good brothers he'd heard of their fame, 
And he washed in their manner salvation to claim ; 
And in order to make them more swift to determine 
He quoted the Fathers like Pusey — (see Sermon). 



But the fiend in the abbey soon kicked up a dust, 
And sneered with disdain on his cresses and crust ; 
And he swore that he never would lay down his 

bones 
Through a long winter's night in a coffin of stones. 



The friars found out 'twas in vain to remonstrate — 
.In his froward proceedings their brother went on 

straight. 
But he so gained their hearts by his humour and 

wit, 
That to send him away not a soul could see fit. 



ST. DUNSTAN. 33 

So he racked his invention, and puzzled his brains, 
Till he found out a plan that rewarded his pains, 
And the very next day— 'twas the feast " Sacri 

Lactis''* — 
He determined to put his contrivance in practice. 

At the hour of refection each penitent sinner 
Sat down to his radishes — (penance for dinner !) 
And the holy Archbishop, pronouncing the grace, 
At the head of the table had taken his place. 

When the herbs, as if willing to lighten their grief, 
In an instant were changed into sirloins of beef! — 
And the water, to make the good fathers more 

merry, 
Turned to Hock and Bordeaux, to Malvoisie and 

Sherry ! 



* See "Tracts for the Times," and other Puseyite publi- 
cations, passim* 



34 LEGEND OF 

The brethen at first felt a scruple to eat, 

Suspecting- who 'twas had a hand in the treat ; 

" But, my friends," said St. Dunstan, " 'twill do 

you no harm — 
I have blessed it — so fear neither cantrip nor 

charm." 



So they took his advice, and without further thought, 
Fell to feasting and drinking- — as good fellows 

ought ; 
And day after day, as the chronicles tell, 
The monks were all edified ! — living so well ! 



Now one or two ladies, thought he of the sable, 

Would greatly conduce to enliven the table ; 

And the saints of the chapel, with sober store 

faces, 
Became sweet living damsels, as fair as the graces ! 



ST. DUNSTAN. 35 

Thus with love, wine, and wassail, with song and 

with kiss, 
The monks found their holy life brimful of bliss ; 
And they made the stone coffin no longer their bed, 
But each upon pillows of down laid his head. 



How laughed the strange novice whose cunning had 

wrought 
A change so complete in their deed, word, and 

thought ! 
How he watched, lest too early the secret should fly- 
On the broad wings of rumour, to meet the world's 

eye. 



The fathers assembled one cold winter night, 

Their wine was all sparkling, their fire was all 

bright, 
And the Abbot remarked, with a smile and a sigh, 
That in this joyous manner a year had passed by ! 



36 LEGEND OF 

A glance from the Primate, calm, thoughtful, and stern, 
Seemed to hint at a secret the rest had to learn, 
But the Abbot declared that, unless it were wrong, 
He should like something moral by way of a song. 

The Sacristan placed himself close by the fire, 

And with turf, furze, and log, made the flame to 

mount higher ; 
While the fat father John, all inspired by the bowl, 
Poured forth to his viol the strains of his soul. 

In the choice of a song for a moment he wavered, 
As catches of tunes on his viol he quavered, 
But at length he struck up a right jovial air 
In high praise of their practice to drive away care. 

Father John's Song. 

Ave Maria ! 'tis the bell 
Is pealing forth its nightly knell, 
Now welcome wine, and woman fair ; 
For what have we to do with care ? 



ST. DUNSTAN. 37 

Come, fill the bowl and pass it round, 
And touch the lute's soft breathing sound, 
And, damsel ! give one balmy kiss 
To fill the measure of our bliss. 

For gentle love and mantling wine, 
Like stars, on mortal features shine ; 
In these all men alike agree — 
All love and drink — and so will we. 

Ave Maria ! 'tis the bell, 
Is pealing forth its nightly knell, 
Now welcome wine and woman fair ; 
For what have we to do with care ? 



Not alone sang the father : the voice of the lute 
And the lyre in their revel no longer were mute ; 
Now breathing the magic of passion they float, 
Now rousing the heart with a glorious note. 



38 LEGEND OF 

Nor few their applauses, the tones of the lyre 
In their beauty and fervour gave strength to desire ; 
But mightier the triumph when soft like the air 
Oe'r the harpstrings that sweeps, rose the voice of 
the fair. 



First Damsel's Song. 
(To the Evening Star.) 

There's a shadow wherever thy soft beams are falling-. 

Though bright be thy lustre, sweet planet of love, 
And oft when the chain of my spirit is galling, 

With sadness I gaze on thy glory above. 

In the blue arch of heaven there are stars that shine 
brightly, 

And planets sublime in their orbits that roll ; 
But shadowless all, for their rays touch us lightly 

As coldly they sweep round the star-lighted pole I 



ST. BUNSTAN. 39 

And 'tis thus with love's passion, though pure as the 
splendour 
That beams from thy circlet of radiance afar, 
In the bloom of our days, when the young heart is 
tender, 
Then — ■ then life is cloudless as thou art, O 
star! 



But, alas, there's a shadow in love, and he blendeth 
Full bitter a dash in the goblet of bliss, 

And for each charm he gives there's a sorrow that 
rendeth 
With anguish the heart he hath chosen for his. 



Ha ! see you the Prior ? he lies at the feet 

Of the damsel whose lips and whose strains are so, 

sweet. 
Ha ! see you the Abbot ? his eye is on fire 
As he tunes to the praises of Bacchus his lyre ! 



40 legend of 

The Abbot's Soxg. 

All hail to the god of the bottle, my boys I 
All hail to the god of the bottle, my boys ! 

For there's there a pleasure 

So boundles in measure 
As the pleasure of wetting one's throttle, my boys ! 



Leave lawn sleeves to deans and to chapters, my 

boys ! 
Leave beauty to boast of her captures, my boys ! 
But we, brothers, we 
Are from captures all free, 
For the bottle affords us our raptures, my boys ! 

Then hey for the sack and the claret, my boys ! 
Where on earth is the pleasure to pair it, my boys ! 

Burnt Malmsey and Sherry 

Are fit for the merry, 
And liquor for lads of true merit, my boys I 



ST. DUNSTAN. 41 

Hurrah ! for the Abbot, the holy, the bold ! 
His lays shall be written in letters of gold. 
Hurrah for the Prior ! but lack to the note 
That from woman s sweet lips doth entrancing])^ 
float ! 



Second Damsel's Song. 
{Constancy .) 

Constancy ! look on the first green leaves 
When fresh in the spring they blow : 

Constancy ! look on the ripening sheaves 
Ere the year's decline they know. 



Look on the sea when the waves are smooth, 
On the sky when the stars are bright ; 

List to the winds when their murmurs soothe 
The rest of the tranquil night. 



42 LEGEND OF 

Gaze upon these, and forget the time 
When the earth her flowers must weep, 

When the stars grow pale and the storms 
sublime 
O'er the seas in their fury sweep. 



Then seek if thou wilt for pageantry, 
For its native clime is here, 

But constancy dwelleth afar on high, 
And dies in this lower sphere. 



There's a tear in the eye of the Abbot so gay, 

And the smile from his face hath all faded away ; 

And all list to the strain that the echoes pro- 
long, 

Till the Prior hath roused them again with his 
song. 



ST. DUNSTAN. 43 



Peioh's Song, 



Time is passing fast away, 
Give me flowers and bring me wine, 
Ere my locks are scant and grey 
Let me roses in them twine. 

Wine, wine, glorious wine 
Doth sparkle and flash with a charm divine ! 



Pass the goblets quickly round, 
Beauty's fairer while they beam ; 

Be our bowl with nectar crowned, 
From our lips let music stream. 

Wine, wine, &c, 



Snatch the flow'rets while they spring 
Ere they fade in swift decay, 

Care to-morrow's dawn may bring, 
Love and wine are ours to-day. 

Wine, wine, &c 



44 LEGEND OF 

Clap your hands for the Prior ! the roses that blow 
Where the spring ever smileth shall bloom on his brow ! 
But list to that hazel-eyed beauty, nor miss 
Those lover-like sounds sweet as maiden's first kiss. 

Third Damsel's Song. 

(Rosalie.) 

Rosalie, Rosalie, 

Quit thy dreams and come with me ! 

Lo ! beneath the twilight star 
Fairies dance beside the sea ! 

Sure thy foot is lighter far, 
Come, then come with me. 

Rosalie, fair are they, 

Graceful all their moonlight play, 

But thine eyes are far more bright — 
To the heart they win their way : 

And that beam of love's own light 
Melteth it away. 



ST. DUNSTAN. 45 

Rosalie, love is there, 

Floating through the mazes fair ; 

He hath caught them with a chain, 
Such as even thou might'st wear, 

Silken fetters to retain 
Footsteps light as air. 

Rosalie, can it be, 

Doth he lie in wait for thee ? 

No, ah ! no, I see it all $ 
He is hound and may not nee ; 

Thou the captor, he the thrall — • 
Thine henceforth is he ! 

Rosalie, love is thine ! 

Bound by those bright locks that twine 

O'er that brow of ivory. 
Woe is me, in vain I pine, 

He nor I can e'er be free 

Maiden fair from thee ! 



46 LEGEND OF 

There's a change in the strain, and the music once 

more 
Yields a gush, would have roused up the Teian of } T ore; 
Fill the goblet again with the nectar divine, 
While ye list to the praises of beauty and wine. 

The Sub Prior's Song. 

Lucy's eyes are clear and bright, 
Dark and glossy Helen's tresses, 

Sweet the rosy smile of light 
That the lip of Clara dresses. 

Can they never, never be 

Soft, and clear, and bright to me ? 

Glory hath a flashing glance ; 
Music's band the heart enchaineth ; 

Love can all the soul entrance, 
Chasing every thought that paineth. 

Why, oh ! why then bringeth he 

Only care and grief to me ? 



ST. DUNSTAN. 

Rank and Pride are gods divine, 
Mark the world before them bending, 

Science like a star doth shine, 
Far and wide her rays extending. 

These are but for high degree, 

Can they, can they stoop to me ? 

Power and Gold are mightier still ; 
Virtue ! who with these compares her ? 

Wealth the head and heart can fill ; 
Great and wise is each who shares her. 

Ah ! but can they ever be 

In the place of all to me ? 

Wine, aha ! I see its beams 
Gaily from the goblet glancing ! 

Wheresoe'er its splendour streams 
Hearts that wept before are dancing. 

Wine can set the captive free, 

Wine, ha, ha ! bright wine for me ! 



48 LEGEND OF 

Once more turn the tide, let the voice of the lay 
Bear from Bacchus to Gros the laurel away. 
Thus the Abbot decrees — and the fairest of all 
Their blue-eyed companions responds to the call. 

Fourth Damsel's Song. 

When the hand of love 
Flings his mantle o'er us, 

Bright is all above, 
Calm is all before us. 

Shapes and sounds of joy 
Float for ever round us, 

And -without alloy 
Bliss doth then surround us. 

Then the iields are green. 
Then the flowers are brightest. 

Fairest every scene. 
And the heart is lightest. 



ST. DUNSTAN, 49 

Blythe and free and gay> 
Dream we not of sorrow ; 

And, if blest to -day, 
Care not for to-morrow. 

When within our hearts 
Love, the wizard, worketh, 

. At his voice departs 
Every care that lurketh. 

Where he treadeth, blow 
Flowers that wither never ; 

These doth he bestow, 
Therefore, love we ever. 



Now rose the gay novice, triumphant and keen, 
And he glanced at the Primate, with joy in his 

mien, 
And seizing his harp, cast his hand o'er the chords, 
And entranced all the monks by his maincal words. 



50 LEGEND OF 

But where is the mortal that dares to recite 
The song of an angel — an angel of night : 
For the strings that he struck seemed to mingle and 

swell 
The music of heaven with the howlings of hell ! 



His form grew dilated — fire flashed from his eyes ! 

Like a giant increasing in stature to rise : 

From his mantle of darkness fierce accents there 

broke, 
And the bell of the Abbey toll'd one as he spoke ! 



" The vows, ye have made — ye have failed to 

obey ! — 
And i" have been with you a year and a day, 
And my coursers and chariot are now at your gate, 
And brethren — for you — 'tis for you that they 

wait." 






ST. DUNSTAN. 51 

But the Primate turned coolly on Satan his back 
And said — " Well then — I'll just take a look at your 

hack." 
And a chariot of sable he saw by the wall 
Of the abbey — sufficient for Abbot and all ! 

Said the Saint, " My dear brother, you're vastly 

mistaken — 
If you think that we thus by our friends are 

forsaken ! 
Besides — all your doings are based on deceit — 
They're not real — and therefore I've winked on the 

cheat. 



" Did you think, when you came in such daring 

disguise, 
That your horns, hoofs, and tail were concealed from 

my eyes ? 
Did you think I'd allow to be drawn into sin 
The monks of a convent that I was lodged in ? 



i)2 LEGEND OF 

" No ! you've smoothed all their penance a year and 

a day, 
Nor shall they at last have the Devil to pay ! 
And to morrow again, with their souls all unhurt, 
To their water and herbs with delight they revert." 

" Nay," said Satan, " I'll have them — I've noted, you 

see, 
AH their soft hours of passion, their bright hours of 

glee- 
Have recorded their loves, and remembered their wine, 
And the chains are unrent round their souls that I 

twine !" 

As he spake, his dark fingers the sin-list unwound, 
And the parchment grew black as all grimly he 

frowned ; 
"And away!" he exclaimed, "let us haste to the 

dead, 
Where the flames are all lightless, and hopes are all 

fled." 



ST. DTJNSTAN. D6 

Said the Saint, "I'm astonished that one of your 

sense 
Should argue so badly on any pretence — 
I tell you their sins, and your changes were all 
Mere juggling, and therefore your title must fall." 



Now the damsels so lovely that Satan had given, 
To make this abode like the Mussulman's heaven, 
Come and whispered His Grace, " that he'd much 

better go 
And pay his old friend a short visit below." 



One look from the Saint, and their beauty is gone, 
And they stand in their niches grave statues of stone ; 
And the wines, choice and rich, that had made the 
roof ring, 
"ecame water ! cold, clear, and fresh drawn from the 
spring ! 



54 LBGBND OF 

" Now you see," said His Grace, most politely, " my 

friend 
In what sad disappointment your plotting must end ; 
And indeed, to my thinking, 'tis strange } r ou don't 

know, 
That you're vastly more quiet without.ws below." 

While he spake, the cock crew — ere the morning 

was bright, 
The fiend spread his wings, and prepared to take 

flight ; 
But, though baffled, he vowed he would try them 

again, 
Nor desist till he had them within his domain. 

And here 'twill be proper to note by the way 

That Saint Dunstan, like many great men in our 

day, 
Was free of the City — the Goldsmiths lay claim, 
With a well founded pride to so glorious a name. 






ST. DUNSTAN. .55 

And our companies still to each envious railer, 
Show the Duke as a Grocer, Prince Albert a Tailor, 
And Brougham as a Fishmonger, versed in the history 
(Law except) — of each possible trade, art and 
mystery ! 



While the Saint with the Demon his contest prolongs 
The tongs had grown hot in the fire — his own 

tongs ! — 
Though how they came there, amid wassail and 

revel, 
Is perhaps only known to himself and the Devil. 



When the quarrel was over, the air became dark, 

With the fiends thronging round their great chief- 
tain — and hark ! 

How their howlings and yellings resound through the 
night, 

As they came to escort home the arch- foe of light ! 



56 LEGEND OF 

" This is too bad," said Dunstan, " proud flesh such 

as yours 
There is nothing but actual cautery cures !" 
And, seizing his forceps, with dignified grace, 
He caught the fiend's nose in their burning embrace! 



Ye Saints ! what a roaring — what vows did he 

make — 
'Twas enough even the heart of a mountain to 

shake; 
And he swore by his darkness, so grisly and grim, 
Neither monk, nun, nor friar, should be troubled by 

him. 



The firm minded Primate, though moved by the 

prayer 
Which he uttered for mercy, in shrieking despair, 
Held him fast to his compact, and then let him go, 
All noseless and burnt, to his kingdom of woe ! 



£T. DUNSTAN. 57 

And now to conclude — give the Devil his due — ■ 
For once to his treaty even he has been true ; 
No order of monks nor of friars he wrongs — 
Nor of nuns — for His Darkness remembers the 
tongs ! 






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